National Latino Education Institute

The opportunity to be the first in your family to get a college degree. To give your children a better life. To make a real difference in your community. To move up the career ladder.

The value of a four-year college degree has increased in Metro Chicago as the local economy continues to move from one built around traditional manufacturing to one based on knowledge and professional services.

It is from Latino Chicago where our future community leaders, and our professionals in health care management and business will come. Chicago’s Latinos will define how our city’s economy will prosper in the early decades of the 21st century, how our how our children will be educated, businesses will be operated—and our health care will be managed.

The State of Latino Chicago

In 2005, Timothy Ready and Allert Brown-Gort from the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, with major funding from the Chicago Community Trust, published a groundbreaking study on the state of Latino Chicago. They write in the preface that “Metropolitan Chicago is undergoing a profound transformation from a region dominated politically and demographically by European Americans” and that the region's largest and fastest growing ethnic segment is the city's Latino population.

1. At 20 percent of the population, Latinos comprise metropolitan Chicago's largest minority, numbering more than one and a half million—the third largest in the country after Los Angeles and New York.
2. Nearly 30 percent of Chicago-area children, and nearly 40 percent of the children enrolled in the Chicago Public School system, are Latino.

The NLEI + NLU Partnership Project

In an economy based on knowledge and professional, scientific and technical services, Chicago's Latinos must earn college degrees in greater numbers—for themselves and for their families. The goal of the NLEI + NLU Partnership Project is to make a college degree more accessible for Chicago’s Latinos working in the health care industry and the city’s business community—and to combine innovative educational programs with community support.

It is a partnership based on mutual respect and shared commitment. The National Latino Education Institute (NLEI) has been at the forefront of creating opportunities for Chicago’s Latino community through education and professional development. Since 1886, National-Louis University (NLU) has been synonymous with access and opportunity and, with the support of NLEI, new programs and strong support systems are being created to ensure that Chicago's Latinos earn college degrees in far greater numbers than they do now.

NLEI is proud to present, in conjunction with NLU, a university-based program of professional development opportunities that has been developed to meet the Latino community’s specific educational needs. This partnership project, which includes undergraduate degrees and professional development programs, has been designed specifically for NLEI alumni, current students, and members of Chicago’s Latino community.