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The City of San Antonio’s college student advisory board wants to know what’s making it difficult for their classmates to stay enrolled in school.
Board members are conducting an online survey to hear from students who have been enrolled in a local institution of higher education any time within the past two years. The updated deadline for responses is April 20.
UTSA student Jonah Espinoza said he and the other members of the advisory board were inspired to conduct the survey after they learned San Antonio’s college enrollment is up, but the percentage of students who stay in college and graduate continues to lag behind Texas and the country as a whole.
“We know that educational enrollment in San Antonio has been increasing, especially now with a lot of the expansions with the Promise [scholarship] programs,” Espinoza said. “But we really feel like an issue that is not being talked about enough, or maybe addressed, is the retention piece, and tied to retention is, of course, attainment.”
According to 2023 census data from the five-year American Community Survey, 29% of San Antonio adults 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 33% of Texans and 35% of Americans. Nearly 37 million people in the U.S. started college but never finished.
Espinoza said the student advisory board is working with colleges, student groups, and other local organizations to get the word out about the survey. They especially want to hear from students who are no longer enrolled.
“We want to know the primary factors behind that decision-making process, or at least the consideration of dropping out of college,” Espinoza said. “And that’s like an incredibly hard demographic to reach.”
He said the board knows what has helped them individually stay in college, and what’s made it difficult. But they want to hear from more students to identify significant trends and make data-informed recommendations to city council and other groups.
“We have different antidotes about our personal experiences [and the struggles of] the people we've interacted with, about their struggles,” Espinoza said. “But we also recognize that we can't go to the city council and mayor and say, ‘Well, my own lived experience is this, and my friend’s lived experience is this.’”
The survey includes questions about work, class load, financial aid, student debt, and family responsibility. It was written by the student advisory board with the help of the city’s department of human services.
Marlys McKinney with the department said the survey findings could help inform future programming and funding allocations.
“We think this survey will give us insight into what's working and where there still potentially could be gaps so that we can best serve our community, and we wanted to hear directly from them about what they need,” McKinney said.
McKinney said the findings could help inform organizations funded by the city, including Next Level Youth, which helps young adults get back into school, and the San Antonio Education Partnership, which helps transition students from high school to college.
Once the survey results are in, the student advisory board will work with city staff to learn about the statistically significant findings and use them as the basis of recommendations to city council and other local organizations.
TPR conducted a similar survey in 2021. The results served as the basis of a limited series podcast called "The Enduring Gap," which explores the Latino college gap in San Antonio, what can be done to close it, and what the rest of the country can learn from it.
According to the latest census data, just 19% of Latino adults in San Antonio have a bachelor's degree. That's up from 17% when TPR conducted its survey. But it's still less than half the percentage of white adults with college degrees.
