Puerto Rico Sees Some of Its Most Promising Students Leave

According to the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, more than 32,000 college age Puerto Ricans could move to the mainland this year. Already, hundreds of students from the University of Puerto Rico have transferred to colleges and universities in states like Florida and New York.

These students have seized on in-state tuition offers from public systems as well as semester-long scholarships from private institutions like New York University and Cornell University, offers extended after Hurricane Maria devastated the island this past fall.

One of them is Juan Feliciano, who enrolled at SUNY Purchase to study journalism and screenwriting. He said he felt an affinity with the creative vibe among the student body. Besides, his schooling at UPR had been interrupted for the last two years, first by a budget crisis and massive student strike and then by Hurricane Maria which effectively shuttered the school for the fall semester.

He told WNYC he was excited to start classes on Jan. 19 but also felt badly about leaving Puerto Rico. “I felt really guilty when I left,” he said.

Some administrators at UPR said they were concerned about losing hundreds of students like Feliciano. Particularly given the steep cut in support from the island’s government, the university is heavily dependent on enrollment in order to meet operating costs. And even before Maria, the numbers were trending downward: UPR saw its enrollment decline by about 7 percent from 2010 to 2016, according to the Education Council of Puerto Rico.

"My main concern is the cumulative effect of so many programs," says Don Walicek, an associate professor of English and linguistics in the College of Humanities at the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras. He co-authored a letter published in the Chronicle of Higher Education highlighting the damage tuition-assistance programs on the mainland could inflict on the University of Puerto Rico.

Prof. Hector Cordero-Guzman, a sociologist at City University's Baruch College, pointed out that the university has played an important role in fostering a middle class on the island and was sure to play a key role in Puerto Rico’s long-term recovery. He predicted many of the students taking advantage of current tuition programs will return to the island. 

"That's the nature of our migration. Puerto Ricans have been for decades migrants in search of employment and they go where the opportunities are," he said.