ABSTRACT
Education is a powerful vehicle to social and economic advancement for many racial and ethnic minority groups in the United States. Historically, access and representation of racial and ethnic minorities within the educational system has been limited and unfortunately continues to have difficulties (see Chapter 4). More recently, access to higher education has steadily increased for all minority groups over the past few decades, however, the proportion of Latinos and Latinas who graduate with undergraduate and graduate degrees remains relatively low (Wilds, 2000). Consequently, there are few Latinos and Latinas who enter academia as faculty or administrators, particularly in prestigious, predominantly White doctoral degree-granting institutions (Allen et al., 2002).
