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August 30, 2007
School Days
It’s back to school time for many households around the world. In the Edelman home, that means our oldest child is packing up for her third year in college, with the attendant scattering of clothing and other belongings, before the eventual loading of the car and the tearful (parents only—bliss and relief for the kid) departure for Boston. In the context of this annual autumnal return to reality, I wanted to tell you about my recent breakfast with Abe Tomas Hughes, CEO of the Hispanic Alliance for Career Enhancement, a nonprofit dedicated to building Latino careers.
Readers of my blog will know that I am very passionate about diversity in public relations. It is a guarantee that we can provide the best advice to clients, who must sell their products, recruit talent and solicit investors in an ever more multicultural world. The key point made by Mr. Hughes is that Hispanics are largely unaware of public relations as a career option, though marketing and sales is their number one career choice. He suggested that PR firms and corporations alike should recruit at schools such as University of Texas Austin, Texas A&M, UCLA and USC where there are strong communications programs and large numbers of Hispanic students. He suggested that we should seek to enrich the curriculum, to ensure that course materials include case histories from successful PR campaigns to both mainstream and diverse audiences. He noted that in his visits to these schools, there is particular interest in new media, such as Migente.com, a Hispanic web site. He bemoaned the continued self-segregation of Hispanic students, though he said it is natural at places such as the Ivy League colleges where Hispanics are only 4-5% of the student body.
At a time when economic achievement is highly correlated to education level, the Hispanic community has a serious problem that will hamper future competitiveness, according to Mr. Hughes. Only 11% have a Bachelor’s degree or more. For every 100 Latinos entering college, only 25 get a degree. Only 57% of Hispanics have a high school diploma and 27% have under a 9th grade education. There is a 30-60% drop out rate from high school, with the most acute problems in large cities such as Chicago and New York. The problem is most acute for those of Mexican descent. Here is the correlation with income—only 26% of Hispanics make more than $35,000 a year, versus 54% of whites. Only 14% of Latinos are managers versus 35% for whites.
The Latino professional is younger but in most other ways very similar to his white counterpart. Most are in the US for more than one generation, bilingual and fully operative in English. Thirty percent of them work in non profit, government or academia, versus 25% of white population. They value growth and career opportunity over money, tending to stay in their jobs longer than their white counterparts. Fifty eight percent provide philanthropic support on an annual basis, most often to the Catholic Church or community non profits. Nearly half (49%) are single, 36% of them have two or fewer children.
Mr. Hughes told me that he is getting great support from Hispanics who have made it to the top, such as Secretary of State Carlos Gutierrez and Sol Trujillo, CEO of Telstraand former CEO of US West. But he is puzzled by the tepid response from many large companies given the clear trends in demographics. Mr. Hughes estimates that there are 50 million Hispanics in the US, of whom 10 million are undocumented. They represent 1 in 8 US residents as of 2005, growing to 1 in 5 by 2008, with 67% from Mexico and 40% foreign born.
Edelman has been making progress in multicultural PR and in improving our diversity of workforce. We now have 28 multicultural team members and 320 minority employees in total, just above 20% of our work force. We made a specific effort to employ summer interns of diverse background. We are a better firm for this. But it is only the beginning. We need to do more and we will start by taking our story to Texas A&M and other schools with outstanding Hispanic students. We will also look for ways to give back to our local communities to improve retention rates in high schools. I would appreciate your views on this important subject.
Posted by Edelman at August 30, 2007 12:23 PM
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Comments
As a young hispanic PR PRofessional, I must express some opinions. I graduated from Florida International University and have climbed up the Communications ladder. At age 26, I am an Account Manager for a strategic marketing/PR firm in Los Angeles. I read a statistic about a month ago that stated that largest percentage of hispanics that graduate college is in South Florida. Have we examined this and tried to raise the numbers in other areas of the country?
Posted by: Mike Roman at August 30, 2007 7:00 PM
I'm Hispanic and a recent graduate from the University of Texas at Austin. Now I do PR in Manhattan. I would agree with you in regards to Hispanics not understanding PR as an option. It would have been great to have people come speak to me about the opportunities PR has to offer.
Posted by: J.L.R. at August 31, 2007 11:31 AM
This is a really important topic and as an Edelman employee I am gratified to hear that our company will be taking specific steps to reach more Hispanics in college. I believe that it is also important for businesses to create environments that do a better job of RETAINING executives who are Hispanic and of African descent.
Posted by: Julia Walker at September 6, 2007 3:06 PM
Unfortunately, there’s a long way to go to close the gap between Hispanics and whites in terms of education. However, as a Hispanic immigrant and as a PR professional at Edelman I’ve found that mentoring is one of the best ways to find success in whatever field you are in. There are several organizations in our industry that provide guidance to those looking to grow within the communications field. Additionally, these types of organizations help you give back to your own community by creating programs where you can be a mentor to others. I encourage everyone to make a contribution with their time, knowledge and experience to help young minorities believe in what they can do, and make them aware of the great contributions that someone with a diverse background means to the communications industry.
Posted by: Monica Granados at September 6, 2007 4:16 PM
Hello, this is an independent spanish Communications Consultant, and I do agree that Public Relations sector is really improving. Much so in Spain, my country were communication online budgets are increasing year by year.
PR is being know as a substitutive to the publicity, but it is really important that the public and the institutions concern about the education and intellectual matters.
For instance, my parents educated me - in my younger years - in languages and did a great effort to give me a multicultural education. This was - hopefully not nowdays - a very rare case.
Thanks for the post and we'll see you at Berlin in few weeks.
Posted by: Diego de Rivas at October 1, 2007 12:32 PM