Hispanics said newest target market

Journal of Business, May 17, 2007 by Brandler, Emily

As the Hispanic population here continues to mushroom, Spokane-area universities and businesses are bolstering their efforts to recruit from and tap into that increasingly important ethnic group.

Gonzaga University has ramped up its advertising in bilingual journals and college guides that target students with Hispanic backgrounds, and has started to reach out more to Latino communities in the Yakima, Wash., area by holding workshops about the college application process.

New this year, Gonzaga also has a regional admissions representative working in California, where the Hispanic community is particularly large, says Julie McCulloh, dean of admissions at the university.

"It's a good business decision, because that's where the population is shifting," McCulloh says of the stepped-up efforts to recruit Hispanic students. "If you're going to maintain the size of your university you have to know where the students are. '

Ben Cabildo, executive director of the African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American Business and Professional Organization (AHANA) here, says businesses are recognizing that shift and responding by targeting Hispanic groups in their marketing and hiring.

"If it's a growing population, then it's a growing market," Cabildo says, adding that "a lot of companies are understanding that growth and trying to leverage that for their businesses."

Higher-education institutions say the reason behind their increased recruitment of Hispanic students isn't simply to get their share of that growing demographic, but also to help ensure that students of all backgrounds can earn a degree and that employers have a diverse pool of graduates from which to choose.

"As our community grows, there's a lot of potential opportunities for individuals to become professionals, and we can't waste that human resource," says Carlos Maldonado, director of Eastern Washington University's Chicano Education Program and College Assistant Migrant Program. "We need to have professionals that serve cultural bridges between mainstream community and our community."

Statewide growth

Washington state had roughly 546,000 Hispanic households in 2005, ranking 11th among U.S. states for Hispanic population, which had jumped nearly 26 percent since 2000, according to the Washington D.C.based Pew Hispanic Center. As of 2005, Hispanics made up nearly 9 percent of the state's total population.

Spokane County had more than 14,000 Hispanics or Latinos in 2006, compared with more than 13,000 in 2004, according to state estimates.

Nationwide, Hispanics represent the biggest anticipated population jump among racial and ethnic groups in their share of public school enrollments, growing from nearly 17 percent of enrollments in the 2001-2003 academic year to a projected 21 percent in 2007-2008, according to the Boulder, Co.-based Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHA). The high school class of 2014 in the U.S. is expected to be nearly one-fifth Hispanic, and the graduating class in the West is expected to be about one-third Hispanic, the commission says.

Gonzaga's efforts appear to be paying off. In 1997, 12.6 percent of the applicant pool at Gonzaga University was students of color, but that number jumped to 20 percent this year, McCulloh says.

"It's also a method of outreach, because we think it's important we do a better job of working with Latino families to communicate how to get into college, how you pay for college, and what it takes to be successful," McCulloh.

Meanwhile, the number of Hispanic students at EWU has more than doubled since 2000, to 656, or about 6.5 percent of total enrollment, in 2006, from 291, or nearly 3.4 percent, seven years ago.

EWU offers printed information about its admissions process, financial aid, and policies, among other things, in Spanish. Those materials are intended primarily for the parents of Hispanic students, since most students are fluent in English, says Jennifer Nunez, a counselor and recruiter in the Chicano Education Program. EWU representatives also attend parent nights at high schools around the region, participate in radio interviews on Spanish radio stations, and work with community organizations and school districts across the state to promote the benefits of a higher education to Hispanic families, Maldonado says.

Family involvement

It's important when recruiting Hispanic students, in particular, to include families in the college application process, Nunez says. Many of the students had jobs in high school to help their families pay the bills, and family members sometimes have difficulty seeing the longterm economic benefits of their child going to college, she says.

"For many families, it's much more of a sacrifice for them to go on to post-secondary education, and the sacrifice on the family's part is a resounding notion," says Michelle Whittingham, associate vice president of enrollment management at EWU. "For this population, it's really critical because of the language barrier that you cater to and meet the needs of the families'