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Educational attainment is an important indicator of social mobility. It is a fact that a college education increases the chances of getting a higher-paying job to move out from places with a high concentration of poverty.
A Hunter College study from 2010-2016 found that only 18.6 percent of the adult Puerto Rican population in the continental United States have a bachelor's degree or higher than 25 percent on the island. The national rate is 32.1 percent.
I am originally from the San Juan metropolitan area and have lived in Boston for the past nine years. I came to Boston with a Master's Degree from the island. Villa Victoria is the Puerto Rican enclave in the city of Boston. It is a subsidized community designed like a small town on the island with a central square and cultural festivals in the summer. The residents are poor and come from rural municipalities out of San Juan.
In 2017, the Boston Planning and Development Agency conducted a study on Puerto Ricans in the city of Boston and found that a low 10 percent of Puerto Rican adults in Boston have a bachelor's degree or higher compared to 43.7 percent of the general adult population statewide. The study also states that Puerto Rican children compose approximately 30 percent of the student population at Boston Public Schools, but only 3 percent enroll in college.
Sometimes I feel frustrated, discouraged, underrepresented, sad, or guilty because I came from Puerto Rico with an advantage that many stateside Puerto Ricans have not had. I believe that the non-profit organizations in Boston that represent Puerto Ricans are guilty of this failure because their efforts have been toward maintaining the poor's subsidies but not getting them out of poverty. I don't understand the mission of non-profit organizations founded five or six decades ago to improve the quality of life of Puerto Ricans, and that population remains under the poverty level in 2021.
Why do you think Puerto Ricans both on the island and stateside have low educational attainment? Are Puerto Rican leaders on the island and the diaspora working to benefit the population they represent or just looking to perpetuate their positions?
So let me get this straight. Luis O. Reyes did a paper for some university to get his grade and he used as reference: 1 year estimate of the U.S. Census, 2014 Community SURVEY, A book from a person about the youth in New York City, 14 pages from a book from 3 people from 2011.
Did any outside authority checked his numbers and paper? I hope he got his grade but all college students to graduate has to write papers about a topic. The teachers are grading this and it has nothing about covering the whole topic or factors. All you need is to pick a topic, find references here and there (take things out of context to fit a narrative) . Pick the context you like and ignore other factors and put your own conclusions as long that you put the references you picked as your sources and that's how you get graded in College to pass.
I can't speak for Puerto Ricans living in NYC or Boston. I never live there. What I can read about intensive Puerto Rican migration to those cities is that the lower end of Puerto Ricans moved to those cities decades ago (the poor of the poor, the reason they left P.R. ) and usually a large % of them give more emphasis to work in the workforce than college because those cities the colleges are very expensive.
College is not for everybody. Today is a very expensive business. Education has nothing to do with intelligence or knowing what you want to do in life. I know many intelligent hard working people that dropped out of college on the first year and they started in small business and today are huge. You heard of them and many others not.
My experiences living in P.R. is that a lot of people go to college. You have federal grants all over and it's treated like a business for the colleges. They send their people to the public high schools (private schools are already accepted, their parents make good money and they know the checks are not going to bounce) to get the students to sign for the college and make sure they apply for the Pell Grant because that's how colleges make their money. It's a huge business and If I had to start all over again, I would open a school in P.R. and hire teachers (low pay) and get students with Pell Grants. It's a nice business.
Most of my friends in P.R. who went to college, went in for something, change concentration and when they got out, most are working on the market in something completely differently. My friend went to the UPR in P.R. (the top University in the island) great grades from H.S. as a Psychology at the UPR. She had to do a paper to graduate( seems familiar). When she got out her only choices were to work on the field for the government which the pay was crap and a turned off or go work at Doral Bank in P.R. processing loans and make some $$$$$. She went to Doral Bank and she is still there. Everything she went to College for and the money the federal government spent was like throwing it out the window because she is doing something completely different for a living and Doral Bank trained her not College. I'm sure she has a diploma on the wall in a frame that means nothing just for her. Like bragging rights that she graduate from the UPR. It's a nice conversation between friends and family but it does nothing for P.R. or the U.S. just more debt our children and grandchildren have to pay.
See my point about College? it is for some but not for others. For others it could be more of an obstacle to what you want to do. In Puerto Rico they give more emphasis to college (it's a business) and ignore the market and the demands. So when most of the students graduate, they are lost and are forced to work on something else or move to the states and work on something else.
But P.R. unlike the U.S., when I was living there gave a lot emphasis of having a degree just to work on base entry jobs especially by the government who are one of the top job providers in the island. Jobs that don't required a college degree in the states, in P.R. they demanded you to have one just to apply and even if you knew the job or have experience doing the job, they would reject your application because you didn't have a college degree. There was a catch, if you were a member of the party in power in the town or have close connections with management or in the family, that would be waived. It was a joke. This is my opinion, I think the government has a deal with the colleges in the island , so the masses use their Pell Grants first in colleges before they apply for government later. It's a business. Colleges make a lot of money with Pell Grants. It's easy money and the checks are always on time and never bounce.
You go to P.R. and everybody is a freaking lawyer. In my town where I used to live, you had a lawyer's office in every corner. They even use their own house to open office. Most of the lawyers in P.R. are in government also because that's also where the money is with federal aid, tax revenues and government contracts. That's why the government of P.R. with lawyers make you get a government stamps, make you get legal papers and pay the fees for everything in government down there. It's a racket just like colleges down there.
Last edited by SanJuanStar; 03-23-2021 at 12:05 PM..
As time goes on, I'd venture to say that the place that will really suffer from a lack of education is going to be the island itself, not the Boricua enclaves in US cities. When I started grad school on the island, professionals still tried to stay if they could, though more and more were leaving. Hurricane Maria and the economic crises both before and after really began driving more and more university grads, middle class families and the professional class in general to flee Stateside. Their English language knowledge and skills are causing them to break the mold and not go to some barrio on the East Coast, or Kissimmee for example. They're going anywhere and everywhere else. They're serving the less educated and less fluent Hispanic communities of all nationalities. They're the demographic that the island couldn't afford to lose, but this death spiral of out-migration is now locked in.
I disagree. You go to whenever they offer you the best options for you and your family. Life is about priorities and options. I know many people in the island that they rather take a pay cut and stay on the island because somethings are more important than making more money in a place that is cold and different culture. It's up to you, what is your priority in life. For some is making the most money (that's fine) and others staying in place that they call home and want to die there (that's fine also)
Puerto Rico's income is higher than any Latin country and it has a stable system because it's a U.S. territory. If We go by the opinions here then most people especially professionals in Latin countries would move to the U.S. because of money and a stable government but they don't.
If professionals overall leave Puerto Rico because $$$$$ and other factors, shouldn't that be the same for all Latin countries? Some of them are still fighting in civil wars, the drug cartels own half of the government, their governments are really corrupt, you don't have the property rights as the U.S., and the poverty is way higher than P.R.
Puerto Rico will be fine. You just have to put the timeline under perspective from 1898 to present. Puerto Rico went from a 400 year colony to a U.S. territory. Then WW 1, Spanish Flu, The Great Depression, category 5 hurricane, WW 2 and transition from an agricultural economy to industrial. All of that was back to back to back and Puerto Rico for being a small island of 130 x 35 miles turned out a lot better than the Latin countries.
Puerto Rico has to transition from an industrial economy to a technology economy. Every country including the U.S. goes through transitions and challenges in their economy. The Latin countries have their own issues and some countries are still stuck that many of them are still in the agricultural economy and can't get pass the massive poverty. They still haven't figured out how to transition millions of their people to an industrial economy or get them out of extreme poverty. Some countries are progressing but millions of their people are stuck in the agricultural economy and very poor. Are they all coming to the U.S.?
Look at Argentina and Venezuela. 2 very rich countries of natural resources and oil and one of the worst systems in Latin America for the common folks and the poor. Argentina went from #14 in the world in the highest per-capita gross in 1900 to #63 today. Venezuela is a disaster and that's with oil (imagine if they didn't have oil) That's what socialism does and many Latinos want to bring that to the U.S.
Compared to the problems of Latin America, I'll take P.R. problems any day and twice on Sundays. I rather be the tail of a Lion in the jungle than a head of a mouse with predators around me.
I disagree. You go to whenever they offer you the best options for you and your family. Life is about priorities and options. I know many people in the island that they rather take a pay cut and stay on the island because somethings are more important than making more money in a place that is cold and different culture. It's up to you, what is your priority in life. For some is making the most money (that's fine) and others staying in place that they call home and want to die there (that's fine also)
Puerto Rico's income is higher than any Latin country and it has a stable system because it's a U.S. territory. If We go by the opinions here then most people especially professionals in Latin countries would move to the U.S. because of money and a stable government but they don't.
If professionals overall leave Puerto Rico because $$$$$ and other factors, shouldn't that be the same for all Latin countries? Some of them are still fighting in civil wars, the drug cartels own half of the government, their governments are really corrupt, you don't have the property rights as the U.S., and the poverty is way higher than P.R.
Puerto Rico will be fine. You just have to put the timeline under perspective from 1898 to present. Puerto Rico went from a 400 year colony to a U.S. territory. Then WW 1, Spanish Flu, The Great Depression, category 5 hurricane, WW 2 and transition from an agricultural economy to industrial. All of that was back to back to back and Puerto Rico for being a small island of 130 x 35 miles turned out a lot better than the Latin countries.
Puerto Rico has to transition from an industrial economy to a technology economy. Every country including the U.S. goes through transitions and challenges in their economy. The Latin countries have their own issues and some countries are still stuck that many of them are still in the agricultural economy and can't get pass the massive poverty. They still haven't figured out how to transition millions of their people to an industrial economy or get them out of extreme poverty. Some countries are progressing but millions of their people are stuck in the agricultural economy and very poor. Are they all coming to the U.S.?
Look at Argentina and Venezuela. 2 very rich countries of natural resources and oil and one of the worst systems in Latin America for the common folks and the poor. Argentina went from #14 in the world in the highest per-capita gross in 1900 to #63 today. Venezuela is a disaster and that's with oil (imagine if they didn't have oil) That's what socialism does and many Latinos want to bring that to the U.S.
Compared to the problems of Latin America, I'll take P.R. problems any day and twice on Sundays. I rather be the tail of a Lion in the jungle than a head of a mouse with predators around me.
Maybe I hung out with the wrong people, but just about everyone I met during my time there (2010-2012) left already. The exceptions are generally people who come from very weathly families or a few folks here and there who do their own thing business-wise and don´t depend on anyone.
Brain drain is a big problem across all of Latin America, but it would obviously be a much, MUCH more common thing if those people could jump on a one-way Spirit or Jet Blue flight for $50 to Orlando with no visa, but that´s not possible like it is for Puerto Ricans.
I get totally why you want to stay. I wanted to stay too. But the statistics firmly show an ongoing exodus
We are missing here the purpose of this thread: To explain why the educational attainment of Puerto Ricans both in the continent and the island is so low, not the reasons why people leave the island.
Lets not drown ourselves on a glass of water. They -in general- simply have other priorities, for better or worse. Case in point are the many Puerto Ricans with advanced degrees, engineers, doctors; teachers, professors at universities, etc. Minus exceptions such as people born with a condition that impairs their ability to acheive educational greatness, Puerto Ricans in general when they want to become true geniuses in various fields they become one.
The culture of valuing education and achieving advanced degrees is something that must be emphasized in general Puerto Rican culture.
We are missing here the purpose of this thread: To explain why the educational attainment of Puerto Ricans both in the continent and the island is so low, not the reasons why people leave the island.
So what's the problem? Is not for a lack of money or universities or a lack of Pell Grants. Maybe many figured out that college is not for them or they don't want to deal with the B.S. colleges makes you jump or crawl. You know the many B.S. credits the colleges demands of the students. Like I said, it's a business.
Most of my friends in P.R. and classmates were accepted in college in the island (Pell Grants). Most changed concentration during college and most of them are working in something else than what they went to school for.
You want an explanation? college is not for everyone and it's expensive. I blame the government and college institutions.
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We are going off on a tangent
