The time draws closer when the majority population in Texas will be Hispanic. That should lend a sense of urgency to having more Hispanics enroll in college and graduate with a four-year degree. But that’s simply not happening.

The latest report from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board says that while the number of Hispanics enrolled in college is at the highest point ever, that simply isn’t enough to meet the goals set by the board, goals that were set in 2000 in a report called Closing the Gap. Meeting those goals isn’t just a good idea. Meeting those goals could determine whether the state’s workforce will be educated enough to sustain a vibrant economy. Anything less will have detrimental effect on all the state’s residents, minority or not.

The board’s latest report on the state’s progress towards meeting the goals of Closing the Gap says that while the 129,000 more Hispanic students have enrolled in higher education since 2000, the number of students would have to increase by an additional 309,000 by 2015 to meet the goal of having 5.7 percent of the Hispanic population enrolled in college. That kind of increase would be a huge leap.

But there are many reasons why Hispanic students have a harder time than blacks or Anglo students getting into college. There’s the matter of language deficiencies. Hispanic students are more likely to come from poverty-stricken families who can’t afford college. And they are more likely to be under-prepared in math, reading and writing. But the most likely reason is lack of a high school diploma. Quite simply, too many Hispanic public school students drop out before graduation. In 1995, only 54.2 percent of Hispanic seventh-graders managed to make it to graduation. That’s a startling number.

There is a direct line between raising the number of Hispanic college graduates, with the aim of securing the state’s future economy, and the health of public education systems in cities such as Corpus Christi where Hispanics make up the majority of public school students. Raising the number of high school graduates in Corpus Christi, improving the number of college-prepared high school graduates and counseling Hispanic families on college admissions, especially those who have never had a college graduate in their households, can be a key part of improving the state’s overall prospects. But it starts with high school: your chances of getting into college are higher if you have a high school diploma.

The inexorable numbers of demography say that Texas will soon be a majority-minority state. The success of the state rides on its ability to educate its citizens, and that means raising educational achievement of the Hispanic population. The keys to that goal are in making college affordable, preparing enough high school students for college and, more to the point, working with families to make sure that Hispanic students stay in school.