Newsweek: Why Minorities Don't Graduate from College

Parents Corner
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<p>"The United States once had the highest graduation rate of any nation. Now it stands 10th. For the first time in American history, there is the risk that the rising generation will be less well educated than the previous one. The graduation rate among 25- to 34-year-olds is no better than the rate for the 55- to 64-year-olds who were going to college more than 30 years ago. Studies show that more and more poor and nonwhite students aspire to graduate from -college—but their graduation rates fall far short of their dreams. The graduation rates for blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans lag far be-hind the graduation rates for whites and Asians. As the minority population grows in the United States, low college--graduation rates become a threat to national -prosperity.</p>

<p>The problem is pronounced at public universities. In 2007 (the last year for which Education Trust, a nonprofit advocacy group, has comparative statistics) the University of Wisconsin–-Madison—one of the top five or so "public Ivies"—graduated 81 percent of its white students within six years, but only 56 percent of its blacks. At less-selective state schools, the numbers get worse. During the same time frame, the University of Northern Iowa graduated 67 percent of its white students, but only 39 percent of its blacks. Community colleges have low graduation rates generally—but rock-bottom rates for minorities. A recent review of California community colleges found that while a third of the Asian students picked up their degrees, only 15 percent of African-Americans did so as well....</p>

<p>Some critics blame affirmative action—students admitted with lower test scores and grades from shaky high schools often struggle at elite schools. But a bigger problem may be that poor high schools often send their students to colleges for which they are, in educators' jargon, "undermatched": they could get into more elite, richer schools, but instead go to community colleges and low-rated state schools that lack the resources to help them. Some schools out for profit cynically jack up tuitions and count on student loans and federal aid to foot the bill—knowing full well that the students won't make it. "
Why</a> Minority Students Don't Graduate From College - Newsweek.com</p>

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<p>This is counterintuitive to me. If a high caliber student goes to a low-rated school, s/he still needs help? And, without help, this standout will not be able to graduate?</p>

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<p>I suspect that there is a combination of reasons for this trend, but affirmative action at highly competitive schools is not one of them for the simple reason that students rarely flunk out of many of those schools, in part because of the grading poliices at many of those schools.</p>

<p>I would suggest two reasons for the trends at schools such as flagship state universities</p>

<p>a) URM’s are disproportionately poor, and may fail to finish for financial reasons.</p>

<p>b) URMs disproportionately attend bad public schools, and are therefore likely to be less well-prepared for the academic demands of college.</p>

<p>I’m sure others have other ideas about this problem.</p>

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<p>Well, geesh, look how challenging it is to master the financial aid stuff. I have a college degree (in sciences, so have research training) and am at home full time. I plug through the forms with frequent emails to the help desk. I read How To guides and confer with my PhD hubby. I scour the college website for those pesky deadlines and additional forms. I make sure to document our special circumstances and I make and mail copies and follow up on the fine points. </p>

<p>How many minority kids are trying to conquer the same system without the time and training and resources that we have? It breaks my heart to go to the fin aid forum here and have some 18 year old post “What’s an AGI and how do I figure out my mother’s taxes?”. </p>

<p>Financial aid officers have a system where they have to play their cards close to their chest – particularly in these economic times. You have to know a lot to get your hand to be a winning one. </p>

<p>And that is just one piece of the puzzle. Whether it is room mate matching, dorm choice, class choice, major choice – all those things work better for those that have a network and know how to use it (and middle and upper income kids don’t always understand how much they benefit from mom being on the Temple landscape commitee or Dad being the assistant soccer coach to the guy whose kid just applied to . . . wherever. Lots of community knowledge helps.).</p>

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<p>Higher percentage of them is getting accepted because of their URM status vs level of preparation for college then in other groups. They struggle without sufficient preparation, difficulty level is too shocking without sufficient HS preparation. Poor or richer does not make much diff., even student without good English and much poorer than URMs will have a good chance at surviving if they have sufficient level of college prep. and a lot of them in a last group excell in college (yes, foreign students, immigrants).</p>

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<p>When you go to one of the top colleges, there are people whose job it is to make sure you succeed. You can’t drop down and take one or two classes a semester and hang around for 10 years. At a top college that has distribution requirements, you’ll be hard pressed to get the required signatures on your first and second year class schedule if you don’t sign up for the math, foreign language, or other courses required for graduation. Many will not permit you to stay if you haven’t completed half the courses required for graduation by the end of your sophomore year. And your advisor or dean won’t sign off on a course schedule which would leave you short of credits to meet that goal. </p>

<p>When you go to a community college, you have to be more self-directed. It’s YOUR job to find out what articulation agreements, if any, the CC has with public and private Us. There are MANY courses which are offered which will not be accepted by 4 year colleges. Lots of students attend CCs to take a couple of courses and so nobody is going to stop you if you reduce your work load, or fail to take courses you need to transfer or don’t take courses which will be required for graduation from the 4 year college you plan to attend. </p>

<p>So, while a lot of students enter CCs with the goal of graduating from the CC in two years, transferring to a 4 year college, and graduating in 4 years, an appallingly small percentage of students with those plans make it. Certainly it is POSSIBLE to do it; there are many CCs students who have done it. But it takes more initiative. Plus, some CCs are better about making sure students stay on track than others are. </p>

<p>But lets take a typical CC student who was an average student in high school, but struggled with math or foreign language or English or some other subject. (S)he puts off taking that math (or other) course the first year, thinking it’s best to do well GPA wise. Second year, (s)he may do the same. Or perhaps (s)he signs up for a less challenging math (or other) course at the CC. It’s sufficient to meet the requirements for an AA. </p>

<p>When the student tries to transfer to a 4 year college, (s)he may learn that math course isn’t acceptable. It doesn’t meet the requirements for graduation at the 4 year college. Maybe some of the other courses (s)he has taken don’t either. Or maybe the CC didn’t require foreign language courses to get an AA, but the 4 year college does. </p>

<p>So, the student learns that his/her 2 years of coursework will only be worth 2 or 3 semesters at the 4 year college. Or he learns that (s)he has to take another math or foreign language or other class subject (s)he hasn’t taken since junior or senior year in high school. Gearing up to take French or Spanish or math can be really, really hard after a couple of years away from it. </p>

<p>So, the student gets discouraged and says…it just isn’t worth it. Instead of 2 more years, it’s going to take me 3 and that’s only if I manage to pass math or Spanish or whatever and I’m not sure I can’t do that. </p>

<p>Seriously, the BEST advice to give a CC student is to check the articulation agreements. If you want to transfer from a CC to a 4 year college, find out which courses at the CC will be accepted by the colleges with which it has articulation agreements. Take only those courses unless there’s a really compelling reason to do otherwise. Make sure that you take them in any sequential subject–like math or some sciences or foreign language.</p>

<p>But even then the CC student may discover that the course that is acceptable for transfer credit has lots of students vying for a limited number of places or is only offered every other year. </p>

<p>Nobody at Harvard or MIT has to worry that the foreign language course he is taking or the math course he is taking will count towards graduation requirements. Nor does (s)he have to worry that the courses needed to graduate will be offered.</p>

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<p>I believe it’s all three: cultural, financial and preparedness. My attitude is if colleges and universities are going to admit individuals who are not as well prepared then they have a moral obligation to support those students otherwise it’s just lip service. The financial issues seem on surface to be obvious regardless of race or culture, my guess is if you extrapolate financial reasons from the entire population of students who don’t complete college in a reasonable time you would mirror demographics and the cultural issues aren’t going to be solved in one generation like they were during the Ellis Island immigration. In those days immigrants plunked their kids into public schools as soon as they could and it was sink or swim regarding the language and culture. My father often talks about not knowing any English when he was sent off to elementary school. These days we put much emphasis on “supporting” cultures instead of assimilating cultures. The elementary and secondary years are far more important than dropping these kids into college and expecting them to “catch up.” As a country we should be putting more emphasis on early education especially in the at-risk communities, and in “trusted cultural leaders” of at-risk cultural segments which in turn will increase participation over time in higher education. Also we have this tendancy as a country for these wild pendulum swings, we’re coming out of a “we need to put more emphasis on math and science” with a generation of kids who are frankly weaker in spelling, reading and writing which are important to college success regardless of major and some are the products of ESL programs who have had their hands held since they were six with their native language. Is it any wonder they land in college and struggle? But trying to equalize all this at the college level is putting the onus in the wrong place and far too “late in the game” IMO.</p>

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<p>“Higher percentage of them is getting accepted because of their URM status”</p>

<p>This is certainly not the case at California community colleges, which are open enrollment. Yet those colleges have the same graduation-rate problems, proportionally, as those that practice affirmative action, like Bowdoin. So affirmative action cannot be the central issue here.</p>

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<p>What about those kids who can’t concentrate on school because they need to earn income to help the family finances and can’t afford the luxury of full-time school & possibly part-time employment? I’ve met several of these kids, who are bright & had several options but their families needed their income to subsist (this is more about socio-economic situation than race, since the families I know are white).</p>

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<p>I think a lot could be traced back to K-12 education.
I have seen bad curriculum, good grades for “effort”, but not mastery, acceptance of poor work ethic that backfires under the guise of " increasing self esteem" aimed at increasing graduation rates, but not building the base of knowledge or the skills needed to be successful with further academics.</p>

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<p>there are a number of reasons…</p>

<p>1) Some don’t come from families that support education</p>

<p>2) Some need these students to come home, work, and help support the family.</p>

<p>3) Some may drop out over grades (like many white kids).</p>

<p>4) Some may like the money that their part-time job affords them and they let the job turn into full-time work.</p>

<p>5) Some had such a poor K-12 education that college is a struggle.</p>

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<p>Yes. Even when high caliber students attend low-rated schools, they may not be able to graduate. They attended poor schools, which means they probably had a very low exposure to English, math, science, etc. They may not even know it. Before I discovered CC, for example, I knew my old high school was struggling but I had no idea how appalling the conditions were. I would have thought, at the time, that as a high caliber student I was perfectly ready for a college-level course load. At poor schools, high caliber students are never challenged, and probably don’t know their own limits or work ethic in difficult situations. They simply do not have the same background in math, science, or writing - three situations where it is very important to have teacher-student interactions.</p>

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<p>Statistics were published a couple of weeks ago for every high school in Colorado showing the percentage (and numbers) of their graduates that went on to matriculate at Colorado’s public colleges, and the percentages of those students who needed to take remedial courses in math, reading, or writing. The numbers were pretty horrifying.</p>

<p>From one of Denver’s inner-city High Schools, of 52 graduates in the cohort who went on to public college, 39 (75%) required remediation in one or more subjects. 35 students required remediation in math, 26 students required remediation in writing, and 25 students required remediation in reading. And these were high school graduates in an urban district that typically “loses” around 50% of the kids between the end of 8th grade and high school graduation – these kids were the winners in that system. </p>

<p>No surprise to me that these kids then have trouble graduating from college. Weak reading, writing and math skills from 13 years of K-12 education are unlikely to be fully compensated for in one remedial course in each subject.</p>

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<p>Look at the number of kids that roll into kindergarten “not ready.” The disadvantage starts at a very young age. Early elementary school is a heck of alot “cheaper” than daycare for families. Once they can enroll, they go, ready or not. I cannot even begin to fathom how much money is spent on remedial education and now we have “remedial” education in colleges where I’m sorry, but there should just not be “remedial” education. It’s a tragedy.</p>

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<p>The article implied that these kids should have been accepted to higher level colleges had they applied, which, to me, means they have the stats and the wherewithal to compete at the higher level. I think calling these kids high caliber and capable of acceptances at better schools had they applied and at the same time calling them unprepared on fundamentals is highly speculative and doesn’t make sense to me.</p>

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<p>“b) URMs disproportionately attend bad public schools, and are therefore likely to be less well-prepared for the academic demands of college”</p>

<p>I was thinking about this recently. It might not be nice to say but if you take the same school and fill it with Asian heritage students of roughly similar backgrounds IMHO you no longer have a “bad school”. I place much of the blame squarely on the students and their families. The old you can lead a horse to water seems very true in many of these cases. I offer no solutions but all the efforts to equalize results are doomed to failure until you change some values on a wide scale starting with the students themselves.</p>

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<p>I agree PaperChaserPop…the logic of that statement escaped me also. Do we really have a system here in the US that says that kids should be advanced because of “potential”? Really. Isn’t that a problem with K-12 - advancing kids before they have mastered the material? Why on earth would we send kids off to college simply because we think they have the “potential” to do the work? That seems like hinkey logic and probably why there are “remedial” college classes which also feels somewhat like an oxymoron.</p>

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<p>barrons, whether I agree with you or not, I applaud your courage on bringing this up.</p>

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<p>Do you mean similar stats or background? If stats, there may some merit to this given the different backgrounds. But, if you really meant similar backgrounds, I doubt it.</p>

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<p>Barrons- there is no such thing as “Asian” in the context of your post.</p>

<p>Hmong, Taiwanese, Singaporean, Laotian, Cantonese. Each group came to this country under very different circumstances. Each individual within that group faces distinct challenges. Some “groups” have had lots of social and economic support integrating into the US educational system and some have not.</p>

<p>So your point is both incorrect and somewhat offensive. I’d hardly call it courageous.</p>

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<p>Call them barriers as opposed to “backgrounds”…financial barriers, cultural barriers, language barriers. I would argue that you can’t lump “asian” into one category, the cultural differences can be astounding depending on the country of origin.</p>