story. There are several instances of recent social science research that provide very strong evidence of present-day discrimination against Latinos in many areas. For example, Holmes et al. (1993) found that while Hispanicjudges give similar sentences to Anglo and Hispanic convicts, Anglojudges give much more severe sentences to Hispanics than they do to Anglos. A number of matched-pair "audits" where Anglos and Latinos with substantively identical credentials apply forjobs, housing or mortgage loans convincingly show a high degree of discrimination against Latinos. (See Kenney and Wissoker, 1994; Fix and Struyck, 1993.) The end of affirmative action and continued discrimination against Latinos would be bad news in any case. However, it is tragic in the face of the fact that even with the enhanced opportunities offered by affirmative action, Latinos are far from attaining equal access to higher education. Since the early 1970's, the Latino proportion of the U.S. college-aged population, those between 18 through 24 years old has more than doubled. However, the proportion of Latinos among all B.A. degree recipients has increased at a much lower rate. Similarly, the percentage of Latino high school graduates ever enrolled in college has decreased since the mid-1970s. In 1975 the proportion of Latino high school graduates attending college was within two percent of that for the total U.S. population. Since that time, the Latino proportion has decreased so that 15% fewer Latino high school grads went to college than was true for the total U.S. population (Chapa, 1991 ). At each successive step or level, the higher education pipeline is increasingly leaky, and it is losing or leaving out larger numbers and proportions of the rapidly growing Latino population. In spite of increased opportunities that may have resulted from earlier lawsuits to increase Latino access to public education like the Edgewood and LULAC suits, the low levels of Hispa...
