Hispanic scholarships get boost

TWO LEADING MIDWEST FOUNdations, the Lilly Endowment and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, have launched major efforts to support Hispanic students in higher education. The moves reflect growing recognition among philanthropists that the Hispanic population is the nation's fastest-growing demographic group. The grants follow efforts to roll back affirmative-action programs on public campuses, which until recently had helped to boost Hispanic enrollment numbers.

In July, the Lilly Endowment confirmed that it had awarded $50 million to the Hispanic Scholarship Fund-based in San Francisco and located on the Web at -to fund prospective and current Hispanic college and university students throughout the fifty states and Puerto Rico. The grant was the largest ever given to an educational group focusing on Hispanics.

Earlier in the year, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation-based in Battle Creek, Michigan, and located on the Web at announced the kickoff of a six-year, $28.7-million push for Hispanic scholarships. Called ENLACE, after the Spanish word for connecting or tying together, the Kellogg effort will progress from initial, first-year awards of $100,000 to individual institutions to larger grants of up to $2 million in subsequent years.

In awarding the grants, both foundations cited the need to direct more resources toward Hispanic education. Hispanics now have the highest dropout rates among any group of high-school students and earn only 2 percent of doctorates conferred annually, even though they make up approximately 11 percent of the overall population.