Dear Commons Community.

The NY Times has a troubling article on the drop-out rate of Mexican students in New York City based on an analysis of the latest US Census data by CUNY’s own Andrew A. Beveridge and Susan Weber-Stoger, demographers at Queens College. Forty-one percent of all Mexicans between ages 16 and 19 in the city have dropped out of school.  No other major immigrant group has a drop-out rate higher than 20 percent, and the overall rate for the city is less than 9 percent.  The article goes on to state:

“This crisis endures at the college level. Among Mexican immigrants 19 to 23 who do not have a college degree, only 6 percent are enrolled. That is a fraction of the rates among other major immigrant groups and the native-born population.

Moreover, these rates are significantly worse than those of the broader Mexican immigrant population in the United States.

The problem is especially unsettling because Mexicans are the fastest-growing major immigrant group in the city, officially numbering about 183,200, according to the Census Bureau, up from about 33,600 in 1990. Experts say the actual figure is far larger, given high levels of illegal immigrants.”

The reasons for the high drop-out rate are attributed to a number of factors including language, fear of deportation, and the need to seek employment but do not explain why the rate is so much higher in New York City than other parts of the country.

Tony