<p>Interesting article regarding the racial gap in graduation rates among the nation's top public colleges. Have things improved at UW since this was published or is the gap still this pronounced?</p>
<p>…Funny</p>
<p>Not to me. I think diversity is important.</p>
<p>Here’s an article suggesting that UW is making some progress at least. Good to see. Still a long way to go though.</p>
<p>[Why</a> Minority Students Don’t Graduate From College - Newsweek.com](<a href=“http://www.newsweek.com/id/233843]Why”>Why Minority Students Don't Graduate From College)</p>
<p>Yea right.</p>
<p>DEMOGRAPHICS.</p>
<p>Consider the location. The South was the home of slavery and therefore historically had many more blacks who were able to form large middle class (and above) communities. Consider Wisconsin- learn the state history for the proper perspective. Did families migrate to Milwaukee and other cities for jobs circa WWII and at other times? Or was it generally single people looking for jobs and leaving their community? Which socioeconomic group tended to move far from family and where the weather is cold in winter? It was not generally the successful people- they had no reason to relocate.</p>
<p>Diversity is great but you need to understand history. Remember the US is a patchwork quilt- not uniform in the distribution of ethnic groups. Look at telephone book listings for various cities and you get a snapshot of the ethnic groups. Far too many of English origin in many VA towns, for example. It depends on your perspective…</p>
<p>UW is working on diversity. It is hard to convince the UW caliber black students to attend UW when they can have many more peers at equally good/better universities. They are not a “dime a dozen” like Asians…</p>
<p>Hope you get the picture. The civil rights movement of the 1960’s made many of us aware of practices elsewhere we never would have dreamed of.</p>
<p>Off my soapbox.</p>
<p>I don’t get the picture at all, sorry. The point of the article isn’t that there are relatively few African Americans at UW when compared to other major public universities – a point which might partially be attributable to demographics – but that UW does a worse job than every other major state university when it comes to graduating the African Americans who do enroll.</p>
<p>just a few “major state universities” and their African American grad rates per the website in the article you posted. </p>
<p>6 YR GRAD RATES AFRICAN AMERICANS</p>
<p>UIUC - 65.2
UW MADISON-55.9
IU BLOOMINGTON - 49.8
U OF IOWA-43.8
MINNESOTA TWIN CITIES - 43.8</p>
<p>Again, the title of this thread is “Racial GAPS in Graduation Rates.” The key word is GAPS. A school with as wide a gap between white and black graduation rates as UW’s is one that many would consider inhospitable towards African American students. I don’t believe that any of the other schools that you’re citing have gaps as wide as UWs, although several have African American enrollment rates as low as yours – meaning that the other schools are doing better at retaining the African American who they enroll. </p>
<p>Besides, I wouldn’t be real proud to be barely above IU and U of I. I thought UW had bigger aspirations than that.</p>
<p>Read this excerpt from the article. Which group of schools does UW wish to be a peer with?</p>
<p>"The University of Virginia has the highest black student graduation rate of this group at 86 percent. In fact, the black student graduation rate at the University of Virginia is higher than the black student graduation rate at four Ivy League institutions: Dartmouth, Cornell, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania. Three other Public Ivies have a black student graduation rate of at least 70 percent: the College of William and Mary, the University of California at San Diego, and the University of California at Los Angeles. </p>
<p>The lowest black student graduation rate among this group of Public Ivies is at Ohio State University. There, only 42 percent of entering black students go on to earn a diploma at Ohio State within six years. Less than half of all entering black students fail to graduate at Indiana University, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Colorado. </p>
<p>One final way to compare the progress of black students at these Public Ivies is to calculate the difference in graduation rates between white and black students. Here we find that at most of the Public Ivies — as is the case at many of the elite private universities — the black student graduation rate is far below the rate for white students. In many cases the disparity is huge. For example, at the University of California at Davis, Indiana University, and the University of Wisconsin, the black student graduation rate is more than 25 percentage points lower than the rate for whites. </p>
<p>At three of the Public Ivies, the black student graduation rate is only five percentage points below the rate for whites. This is the smallest difference among this group of universities. By far the most impressive is the University of Virginia with its high black student graduation rate of 86 percent and its small racial difference in graduation rates."</p>
<p>is it the thread or the article? now i don’t get the picture at all.</p>
<p>what’s up with the University of Virginia’s College at Wise? </p>
<p>42.8% of white students graduate in 6 years
25% of african american students graduate in 6 years.</p>
<p>gap</p>
<p>any recommendations professor?</p>
<p>Again, consider the demographics. The VA pool of applicants is far different because of its location and therefore its much larger number of generations of black traditional families. You need to study your regional history to understand the socioeconomic background of various ethnic group pools of applicants. It helps to have a large solid middle class from which to draw students. There is a critical mass of students needed to provide support. Being a lonely only is no fun.</p>
<p>nova- why are you wasting your time finding subjects like this? Is it still sour grapes that your child was rejected from UW? I can think of much better ways to spend my time than bashing a distant campus I have no ties to. I’m sure you will find every last less desireable feature in your obsession. Too bad you can’t enjoy the positives.</p>
<p>So your comparing the middle, upper middle class black population in DC and suburban NOVA attending UVA with poorer, inner city blacks from Racine and Milwaukee who struggle to pay to go to Madison. And “the gap” is UW’s fault? </p>
<p>BTW I don’t see why a university should go out of its way to make sure one group of students succeed anymore than they would for any other student.</p>
<p>Some groups have an automatic advantage because of ethnic group and/or parents’ income. Being white is always an advantage in our current society. Coming from a middle class town/neighborhood is because of the better schools. It is good to break the poverty cycle- some kids have the brains but not the good education most take for granted.</p>
<p>[Once</a> struggling to learn English, student now heads for Harvard med - JSOnline](<a href=“http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/94671529.html?page=2#comments]Once”>http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/94671529.html?page=2#comments)</p>
<p>Just a couple of comments.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Wis75, where on earth did you get the idea that I had a child rejected from UW? My kids are from NOVA and went to U-Va. It’s harder to get into U-Va from in state than it is to get into UW from out of state. The numbers speak for themselves. </p></li>
<li><p>Eastsider24, where on earth did you get the idea that African Americans at U-Va are largely from an “upper middle class black population in DC and suburban NOVA?” DC is out of state, is hardly overflowing with “upper middle class blacks,” and enrolls only a handful of undergraduate students, black or white, at U-Va. As for Northern Virginia, it only constitutes 25 percent of U-Va’s undergraduate enrollment and does not contain a large African American population. In fact, the majority of U-Va’s black student population comes from outside of Northern Virginia and is not “upper middle class.” U-Va has a program, AccessUVA, which funds full grant aid to the lowest income students and places a cap on financial aid loans students receive resulting in more grant aid. Barrons likes to disparage U-Va’s financial situation but in fact it has one of the largest endowments in the country and is one of the few state schools that is need blind in admissions and guarantees to mee 100 percent of a student’s financial need.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>In short, U-Va succeeds in recruiting and retaining African American students not because they’re all rich NOVA kids but because the University offers more aid and support to African American students any other manor state university.</p>
<p>I’m sure you have data to support those claims. And UW’s research budget exceeds both UNC and UM mentioned here. </p>
<p>Anyhow, Casteen just did an interview with former President O’Neil. Here’s a key segment.</p>
<p>"O’Neil: I recall two statistics, which are classically paradoxical. That, on one hand, between about 1982 or ’83 and the late 80s the average full professor salary went from the top of the bottom third of AAU rankings to the bottom of the top third. I’m not quite sure how that happened, but that’s the sort of upside. The downside is something that I don’t think we realized for a couple of years. And that is that, among all AAU institutions that had medical schools, UVA’s sponsored research levels were next to the bottom, above only that of the University of Missouri-Columbia. That really scared me when I realized just how far behind we were both in levels of sponsored research and even more in terms of usable research facilities. </p>
<p>Casteen: I think about that whole issue—inadequate facilities for science. I can walk around behind the hospital and say, Yes, we’ve made progress, but by comparison to what has been done in the same period at Chapel Hill or at Michigan—at places that we really ought to see as our competitors as well as our partners. But other than the Carter Harrison Research Building behind the Medical School that is privately financed, and those two families, we haven’t found donors willing to pay for major facilities for the sciences. Until we got the restructuring legislation in 2005, we didn’t have the capacity to issue the kind of institutional bond of debt that’s letting us build the two large facilities that are being built, happily, in the football parking lot. There’s something symbolic and important about saying that, at this point, athletics will step back a little bit and we’ll begin to fill in some of the blank spots in the academic plant. </p>
<p>I think it took us a long time to accept the idea that large science buildings are necessary. Scale is part of it. We had a terrible time dealing with the reality that science buildings are, in the end, built to industrial specifications and not more academic specifications. "</p>
<p>You’re mixing apples and oranges. We’re not talking about research funding. How’s this? I’ll grant you that UW has better graduate programs in the sciences. Now, will you grant me that, unlike UW, U-Va is need blind when it comes to undergraduate admissions and has committed to meet 100 percent of an undergraduate student’s demonstrated financial need?</p>
<p>nova- why on earth are you picking in UW? What is your agenda? Why could you care about UW? You must have a reason to go out of your way to learn so much about a school you have no ties to, much less to locate any negatives to exploit. I presume you are not doing the same to every school similar to UW. UW must be awfully special to merit your attempts to take it down a peg or two.</p>
<p>I’m not picking on UW. I’m reciting facts that might be of interest to prospective applicants. Didn’t I just say that UW has better graduate programs in the sciences than U-Va?</p>
<p>I’d like to see UW improve on diversity.</p>
<p>No doubt UW can do better.</p>
<p>The 2008 freshman class at UVA was 8.7% African American. </p>
<p>8.7% is what you are bragging about? </p>
<p>Particularly when cherry picking the best students because the rest can go to:</p>
<p>University of Virginia-Wise and be lucky to graduate in 6 years.</p>