A Work In Progress

A new statistical portrait of Hispanic-Serving Institutions shows them showing up in unexpected places but still concentrated geographically along the country's southern border and Puerto Rico.

Excelencia in Education, a Washington, D.C-based education advocacy group, reports that HSIs are appearing in states that are thousands of miles from Mexico, such as Illinois, New Jersey and Massachusetts.

But HSIs represent only about 10 percent of all institutions of higher education and most are located in states long associated with large Latino populations.

"Over half of all Latino undergraduate students in higher education (54 percent) are enrolled in less than 10 percent of institutions in the United States," the report says. "This concentration of Latino enrollment in higher education was first recognized by educators and policy makers in the 1980s and contributed to the invention of a new construct, which came to be known as Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs)."

HSIs now number 293, located in 17 states and Puerto Rico, the Excelencia analysis found.