Racialized Goods: Latinx Access and Funding in U.S. Higher Education

• In Event: Race Matters: Higher Ed Policy, MSIs, and Racially Marginalized Demographics

Abstract

This work identifies how public and private goods justifications impact Latinx inclusion and funding in higher education throughout history. The piece dialogues with problematized public and private good definitions from economic and sociological research. The literature demonstrates that Latinx student inclusion follows patterns similar to other racialized groups, but racial ambiguity long prevented access to arguments around the public good and therefore funding. Additionally, the concentration of Latinx students at the lowest levels of a stratified system, pursuing degrees framed as private goods, impacts funding, enrollment, degree-attainment, and perpetuated inequality. The intersection of complex racialization, stratification, and the shifting definition of whose good is the public good serve to reinforce higher education as White Property and limit full Latinx participation.

Author

• Lauren M. Shook, The University of Texas at Austin