Access to Higher Education in New Mexico: Ethnoracial, Geographical, and Class Disparities

eScholarship, University of California 2022-12-24

This chapter, written for an anthology on Race and Racism in Rural America, assesses the intersections of race and ethnicity with rurality in relation to higher education access and attainment in the State of New Mexico. New Mexico is one of the nation’s most rural states and is home to a distinct population in terms of race and ethnicity: the greatest percentage Latinx/Hispanic population—right at half and growing fast—and the third smallest population of non-Hispanic whites among all states. Further, more than a tenth of New Mexicans identify as American Indian, the second greatest percentage among the states. The fifth most sparsely populated state in the nation, New Mexico struggles chronically with a lagging economy, high poverty and child poverty rates, and low educational attainment. Against that demographic and economic backdrop, the analysis in this chapter reveals disappointing educational attainment among Hispanic and American Indian students as measured against these groups’ proportion of the state’s broader population, but particularly in relation to New Mexico’s college-aged population. In other words, young Hispanics’ status as a majority does not appear to be a protective factor—or at least not a sufficiently protective one—when it comes to higher educational attainment. American Indian students struggle to an even greater degree, falling far behind both their non-Hispanic white and Hispanic counterparts. Still, being low-income is a bigger risk factor than race or ethnicity when it comes to college preparedness. While rural residents’ education level consistently falls behind that of metropolitan residents, it is impossible to determine the extent to which this is due to a rural brain drain—the phenomenon of young people raised in rural areas who migrate to urban areas to obtain their college degrees and then stay, often because of better economic opportunities. Indeed, the data suggest bleak higher education outcomes for all low-income and rural re

higher education; New Mexico; race; ethnicity; class; low-income; poverty; Native American; American Indian; Hispanic; Latino/a; K-12; college readiness; rural; nonmetropolitan; brain drain; publication

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