Black Colleges Recruiting More Hispanics

Black Colleges Recruiting More Hispanics

Faced with stiff competition for their traditional students, historically black colleges are now making a push to recruit Hispanics.

Black colleges that want to shore up enrollment numbers are revising recruitment strategies to include more members of the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority. The campuses are hiring Hispanic recruiters, distributing brochures that feature Hispanic students and establishing special scholarships for Hispanics.

'I tell them 'There's a place for you and a need for Latinos to be present on (historically black) campuses,' said Nelson Santiago, a Puerto Rico native and recruiter for the historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C., which has about 170 Hispanics out of 11,500 students.

Santiago and recruiters from other schools, including the all-male Morehouse College in Atlanta, are visiting predominantly Hispanic high schools and setting up booths at college fairs to recruit Hispanics. Morehouse sends recruiters to high schools in southern Florida, New York, eastern Texas and Los Angeles _ areas with large Hispanic populations.

'Considering Latinos and African-Americans share a lot of history together that they don't realize, I think it's a good idea,' said John Miranda, the 21-year-old son of Brazilian immigrants who is one of 15 Hispanics enrolled at the 2,800-student Morehouse.

Miranda, of Silver Spring, Md., said he picked Morehouse because he was offered a full scholarship funded by an Atlanta foundation that promotes the education of Hispanics....