More Latino students are enrolling in four-year colleges and universities than ever before. But what happens to these students after they arrive on campus? Do they leave with a degree?

A new report by The Education Trust shows that simply attending college does not provide the personal or broader social benefits that come with completing a degree – particularly a bachelor’s degree.

Just 17.8 percent of young Latino adults, ages 25-34, hold a bachelor’s degree compared to 43.7 percent of young White adults. A little over 5 in 10 (53.6 percent) Latino students who start college as first-time, full-time freshmen at four-year institutions earn bachelor’s degrees from those institutions within six years — a rate 10 percentage points below that of their White peers.

This completion gap has multiple causes and closing it will require a three-pronged strategy:

  • Closing the completion gap at each college and university.
  • Ensuring selective institutions – with more resources and higher graduation rates – enroll more Latino students.
  • Improving completion rates at the low-performing institutions where Latino students are more likely to attend.

But just closing the gap at individual institutions is not enough to erase the national completion gap. To do so, more Latino students need the opportunity to attend selective institutions. Latinos make up 18 percent of the US population but just 8.5 percent of students at selective institutions, the very places that have more resources to help students cross the finish line.

Read more about the success of Latino students by Andrew Nichols at Hispanic In Philanthropy.