A degree in every Latino household®
Click to watch highlights of the Education Summit
The future of U.S. competitiveness depends on increasing the number of Americans with college degrees. HSF joined groups including the White House Initiative for Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans, the Lumina Foundation for Education and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in calling for a national effort to significantly increase the number of college graduates over the next two decades.
We launched the Generation 1st Degree initiative to close the "degree gap" that exists between Latino students and their peers by helping at least one person in each household earn a college degree so they can, in turn, motivate and help others in the family to seek the same achievement. The goal is to add more than 14 million new Hispanic college graduates by 2025, a number that would bring the degree attainment rate to 60 percent and help close the projected educational disparity that is likely to develop if current trends continue.
The Generation 1st Degree initiative has brought together state and national leaders in education, executives from philanthropy and corporations, with the common goal of strengthening America by making a college education a viable choice for all Latinos in this country.
Most notably during our Education Summit event, more than 200 gathered to converse on the college attainment issue and listened to speakers like William A. Ramos, Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, Office of the, Secretary, U.S. Department of Commerce; Guy Garcia, President and CEO of Mentametrix and author of the New Mainstream; Mark Lopez, Pew Hispanic Center; and Doug Darfield, of Nielsen Marketing.
The speakers shared light on demographic and education trends as well as the challenges and opportunities affecting college completion.
