(Name-mce) ListServ Road to college filled with distinctive barriers for Mexican-Americans

[Anselmo Villanueva]

Colleagues at the University of Oregon were seriously misquoted about
their study and findings.  The misquotes appeared in many newspapers
throughout the country since it was picked up by Associated Press and
distributed.

Below is the official press release.  For more information, contact
Dr. McWhirter.

Please share this information with others who may be interested in
their research.

Anselmo
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Ellen Hawley McWhirter, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Director of Training
Counseling Psychology Program
5251 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-5251
ellenmcw at uoregon.edu
office: (541) 346-2443
fax: (541) 346-6778
http://counpsych.uoregon.edu/
http://counpsych.uoregon.edu/cpsyfaculty/emcwhirter.htm

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Road to college filled with distinctive barriers for Mexican-Americans:
Research targets why so few actually reach and complete higher education

EUGENE, Ore.--(Feb. 8, 2007)--Mexican-American high-schoolers and
their white peers aspire equally to go on to college to chase their
dreams, but the minority students see many more hurdles in their
paths, say researchers at the University of Oregon.

The findings -- when added to previous research in the field of
social-cognitive career theory that looks at the relationship among
interests, aspirations and outcomes -- raise an important question,
said lead author Ellen Hawley McWhirter, a professor of counseling
psychology in the UO College of Education. "What are we going to do as
a society to dismantle those barriers so that they can achieve their
goals and make the contributions they want to give to our communities?"

The new study, published in the February issue of the quarterly
Journal of Career Assessment, focused intently on 28 potential
barriers to higher education as perceived through the minds of 436
Mexican-American and white students in the Southwest and Midwest.
McWhirter began studying such barriers in 1991 while she was a
doctoral student in counseling psychology in Arizona. This time,
McWhirter and colleagues focused on subgroups of the previously
identified barriers in an effort to find particular trouble spots.
They also considered the possible role of parent education and the
students' perceptions of their own abilities to overcome the
roadblocks they anticipated.

"The most striking findings were the degree to which the
Mexican-Americans not only anticipated that they were more likely to
encounter barriers, but that these would be more difficult to
overcome," McWhirter said.

The barriers included internal factors (lack of confidence and fear of
not fitting in), relational barriers (pressure or lack of support from
friends or teachers), preparation and motivation to pursue college,
and the prospect of having to leave behind their friends and family.

A driving force for McWhirter's research can be found in figures
available from the National Center for Education Statistics. Only 10
percent of Latinos in the United States receive a college degree, even
though more of them are attending college than ever before, compared
to 18 percent of blacks and 34 percent of whites. College graduates
earn an average 77 percent more than high school graduates, but fewer
Latinos attain that pay level.

"In spite of strong family values for education, Latino students have
among the highest dropout rates," McWhirter said. "Latino parents have
aspirations for their children that are as high as or higher than
white parents do. So what's going on here?"

"There are very real barriers associated with socioeconomic factors,
racism and school quality that many Mexican-American students
encounter," she said. "This study focuses on student perceptions to
better understand how these contextual factors influence what they
themselves anticipate. According to social cognitive career theory,
those who perceive more barriers will be less likely to turn their
career interests into goals, and their goals into outcomes."

Findings also showed that girls, both Mexican-American and white,
viewed financing higher education as a bigger barrier than did boys.
Surprisingly, McWhirter said, boys and girls -- not just the girls --
were equally likely to foresee such barriers as pregnancies or sex
discrimination.

Another unexpected finding was that the education level of parents was
unrelated to students' perception of barriers. While students of
higher educated parents were more likely to plan to attend four-year
colleges, they did not anticipate fewer barriers. "This finding,"
McWhirter and colleagues wrote, "rules out the possibility that
parental education would account for some of the large ethnic group
differences in perceived barriers that we've identified in previous
research."

The co-authors suggest that future research and interventions that
target perceived barriers should consider the influence of supports on
postsecondary plans, as well as the transition from high school to
college. This includes understanding how schools can maximize and
incorporate parental influences on students' career development. "In
the current study," they wrote, "there were clear ethnic differences in
the perceived likelihood of encountering and difficulty overcoming
barriers associated with the support of significant others."

"We know that Mexican-Americans families often are characterized by
close ties, resilience, a strong work ethic, interdependence and
support," McWhirter said. "We know that parents are wonderful
resources, but sometimes they lack familiarity with the school system
to guide their children through preparing for higher education. For
example, they may not know how to help their kids prepare for college
entrance exams or apply for scholarships. As educators, we also need to do more
outreach to Latino parents and families, making our educational
systems more accessible, and being more collaborative in our
vocational planning efforts."

Co-authors of the study were Danielle M. Torres, a counseling
psychology graduate of UO who now is a professor of school counseling
at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., and Susana Salgado and
Marina Valdez, who are current UO doctoral students in counseling
psychology.

Contact: Jim Barlow, 541-346-3481, jebarlow at uoregon.edu

Source: Ellen Hawley McWhirter, professor of counseling psychology,
541-346-2443, ellenmcw at uoregon.edu

Link: http://counpsych.uoregon.edu/cpsyfaculty/emcwhirter.htm

Image: Ellen Hawley McWhirter:
http://waddle.uoregon.edu/gallery/McWhirter

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