Graduation season is still a few months away, but now that we’ve kicked off a new decade, it’s important to note that Latinos earned more degrees in the past decade than ever before. Cue the applause! The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released a comprehensive data analysis that reports that enrollment of Latino students at college campuses has increased. According to data, 70 percent more Latinos earned degrees within the past decade – hooray!

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Enrollment numbers between the ages of 18-24 increased from 27 percent in 2017, which means more Latinos in college earned a college degree from 2005 to 2017. Also, according to NCES, 2010 showed to be the year with most college enrollments. However, there’s still plenty of room for improvement as Latino students who earned a degree only made up five percent of the total degrees given during 2005-2006.

That is only two percentage points of an increase during the latest ten-year cycle taking into account that the Latino population is the second-largest ethnic minority in the U.S. Only 15 percent of the Latino population over the age of 25 earned a Bachelor’s degree or higher in 2017, which is a lower rate when compared to the entire U.S. population.

Even in states with large Latino populations such as Texas, New Mexico and California, Latinos did not do much better. In New Mexico only 16 percent of the Latino population earned an equivalent to a Bachelor’s degree. In Texas, only 14 percent and California was merely 13 percent.

So you see, there’s still some work to be done, but it’s all going in the right direction!