Community-College Leaders Are Urged to Step Up Outreach Efforts to Hispanic-Americans

By ELYSE ASHBURN

College leaders are mistaken if they believe that cultural differences make Hispanic high-school students, especially recent immigrants, less likely to attend college than their white counterparts, the president of the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute told community-college trustees and presidents on Friday.

"It is not culture but cognition -- a lack of understanding of the American education system on the part of parents that are foreign born," said Harry P. Pachon, who is both a professor of public policy at the University of Southern California and head of the institute, a nonprofit research group that focuses on issues affecting Hispanic communities.