The University of Notre Dame is ranked 13th among research universities and in the top 35 overall for graduating Hispanic students, according to “Big Gaps, Small Gaps: Some Colleges and Universities Outpace Others in Graduating Hispanic Students,” recently released by the Education Trust.
Notre Dame was identified as having only a 2 percent gap in graduation rates between white and Hispanic students and the third-highest six-year graduation rate (94.3 percent) for Hispanic students, bettered only by Duke and Stanford Universities.
“This is an important recognition of the increasing emphasis that the University of Notre Dame has placed on the importance of Latinos to the future of our country,” said Allert Brown-Gort, associate director of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies. “Notre Dame is an institution at which the Latino presence has been steadily rising over the past decade, and one in which we expect to see an inexorable closing of the gap in graduation rates.
“As the report points out, ‘religious institutions with a commitment to social justice’ were most likely to have small graduation gaps,” Brown-Gort said. “And Notre Dame recognizes that this mission can only be fulfilled if we focus on increasing the educational opportunities for the growing number of young Latinos.”
In addition, Notre Dame’s six-year graduation rate for African-Americans is approximately 91 percent, a figure that is higher than every institution listed in the report, except Rice University, meaning an African-American student has a higher probability of achieving a bachelor’s degree at Notre Dame than at almost any other university in the country.
The Education Trust promotes high academic achievement for all students at all levels. It strives to close the gaps in opportunity and achievement that consign young people—especially those from low-income families or who are black, Latino or American Indian—to lives on the margins of the American mainstream.
The full report is available online at http://www.edtrust.org/.