http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-arent-there-more-black-scientists-1445467260?alg=y
The evidence suggests that one reason is the perverse impact of university racial preferences.
“…encouraging black students to attend schools where their entering credentials place them near the bottom of the class has resulted in fewer black physicians, engineers, scientists, lawyers and professors than would otherwise be the case.”
Here is a similar article about AA doctors. It states that fewer AA male doctors graduated in 2014 than in 1978. There is another study out there stating that more AA doctors graduated from med school annually in the early 1960’s than in current times.
https://www.jbhe.com/2015/08/why-black-men-are-making-no-progress-in-medical-education/
Here’s a recent NYT article
How does tiny Xavier University in New Orleans manage to send more African-American students to medical school than any other college in the country?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/magazine/a-prescription-for-more-black-doctors.html?_r=0
…
Being involved through Church in a program to help minorities navigate college, I can tell you the majority of students make very poor decisions about where to attend. They invariably choose schools with extremely low graduation rates, lack of resident students and lack of community. They are afraid of distance from home, even a few hours by car, they are afraid of not fitting in when they shouldn’t be and they follow friends.
The AAMC supplies data on the number of med school applicants by race.
The top 10 undergraduate Institutions supplying Black or African-American applicants:
Howard University::89
Xavier University of Louisiana: 83
University of Florida: 75
University of Georgia: 56
Rutgers University New Brunswick Campus: 55
University of Maryland-College Park: 51
Duke University: 47
University of South Florida: 47
Cornell University: 46
University of Central Florida: 46
https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/86042/table2.html
Compare that to the top 10 Institutions supplying Hispanic, Latino, or of Spanish Origin applicants:
University of Puerto Rico-Rio: 222
University of Florida: 155
University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez: 123
University of Miami: 108
Florida International University: 103
University of Texas at Austin: 91
Texas A & M University-Main Campus: 80
University of California-Los Angeles: 79
University of Central Florida: 69
University of South Florida: 61
Blacks or African-American’s make up 13.2% of the population, Hispanics make up 17.4%.
The top 5 schools are:
UCLA: 919
U-M-Ann Arbor: 825
UC-Berkeley: 769
UF: 760
UT-Austin: 733
Even in Africa?
gator88ne
just a reminder " Hispanic" is not a race or even an ethnic background. hispanics can and are of any race.
There is also evidence showing that students entering more competitive colleges at a lower position derive greater benefit than they would have at a less competitive institution.
The lack of preparedness that the Xavier student spoke of could have its roots in the age-old Washington-DuBois debate about the best path to prosperity for Black Americans.
B.T. Washington’s philosophy was that agricultural and vocational training were the best hope for Black achievement. W.E.B. DuBois argued, often angrily, that a broad based intellectualism was the best hope for eradicating legal discrimination and economic oppression. DuBois coined the phrase, “The Talented Tenth,” an alliteration of his hope that Black doctors, lawyers, teachers and other professionals would lead the people to overcome Jim Crow and seize their full rights as American citizens. Washington and DuBois were fierce rivals, a rivalry in which DuBois largely fared poorly because of Washington’s great political influence and support from some of the great captains of industry of the 19th century. Obviously, DuBois vision was not supported by the white majority’s prevailing racial views of the day, hence the underfunding and usually non-existent funding for the education of Black children in the south; but Washington’s disdain for professional and liberal arts education was shared by countless Black folks, too. Thus, that archaic idea and the residual discrimination that oddly supplements it linger in some disadvantaged communities today (“our students don’t need AP,” for example). Thank goodness places like Xavier have survived, prospered and well prepares its students for the 21st century.
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encouraging black students to attend schools where their entering credentials place them near the bottom of the class has resulted in fewer black physicians, engineers, scientists, lawyers and professors than would otherwise be the case."
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Wow… I guess that makes sense. The “hook” that gets those with bottom quartile or even bottom half credentials into reach schools can backfire if they get weeded out or earn modest grades in premed prereqs or STEM classes because their classmates are stronger than they are.
Imagine the even GREATER shock that Xavier grad would have experienced if he had attended a top 50 school.
@mom2collegekids is correct - STEM classes demand much more background knowledge and grades are mostly test based, whereas non-STEM classes may have papers, presentations and other, more subjective types of grading. Of course, background knowledge is important in any field - but not in the same way it is in a STEM class.
Our university serves many URM students. They come in underprepared in math and science, relative to the white/Asian students, even though we are not a very selective institution. We have programs in place to get more URM students through the STEM fields. We have been somewhat successful with students who come in with a passion to learn, and were willing to put in the work to overcome deficiencies. If we had something like Xavier’s commitment across the board, maybe we would be more successful.
Perhaps the top URM students would gain more from a top university, in terms of a better college experience, but they may not have the high school background to fully succeed in a STEM major. And the top schools have really tough STEM programs. I would be curious to see a breakdown of what the URM students in the top schools actually get their degrees in.
My small amount of ancedotal experience when my kid attended an inner city- but well rated school was that oftentimes parents encouraged their kids to put their energy into sports and discouraged them from even trying AP classes in high school.
That doesnt have to limit later choices, but it can be harder to build that foundation.
Just goes down to parental support and supervision. School does not replace a parent, school just provides academic instructions. There are no tricks, magic or whatever, Asian kids are pushed to work hard and they are dominant at many selective places, from test-in HS’s all thru Med. Schools. There is no other way, if homework is not done day after day, year after year, how a brain that has no math background, can absorb chemistry and physics? Not possible! There are exceptions and I bet that in most exceptions there is a great parent behind the success.
It’s not as simple as that. We’re talking about a population that’s been historically disadvantaged due to poverty and racism.
If the parents – grandparents,etc – have no experience or tradition of attending supportive schools then matriculating to supportive universities and entering the professions, it’s unlikely they will encourage their children to pursue that path. They may push their children toward a more familiar path, one that feels more practical and attainable, a path they themselves took.
That’s why schools such as Xavier are crucial: the support they offer is likely the first truly meaningful help these students have had.
The research that supports this theory comes from the same population economists at Princeton who get everyone riled up about discrimination against Asians at elite colleges. In the process, they purport to disprove the theory to which @JustOneDad alludes, that less-prepared minority students gain ground at demanding colleges.
I can’t look for the articles now, but they should be searchable. Thomas Espenshade. What they claim to show is that African-American students at highly selective colleges switch out of STEM majors and abandon plans to pursue an MD at a much higher rate than other students, and their relative GPA gains are largely the result of their disproportionate switching into less demanding majors. At HBCUs, the rate at which African-American students switch out of STEM majors and/or abandon plans to go to medical school is much lower than the rate at highly selective colleges, and basically resembles the rate at which whites at highly selective colleges change their plans in that way. Thus, HBCUs (and other colleges, like Xavier in NOLA, with similar demographics) produce African-American graduates who are qualified to apply to and to be accepted at medical school at a much higher rate than the Ivy League does.
It’s interesting, and very much an argument for separate and not-quite-equal education.
^^Really? That’s your take-away? So, the relative success of African American kids in nurturing HBCU environments is a good argument for going back to segregation? How about those HBCU successes being a good argument for other schools learning from and adopting some of those HBCUs approaches? African American (as well as Asian, white, etc.) kids do better when those around them–parents and teachers alike–believe in and communicate the expectation that they can succeed.
If you take race out of it, it resembles less of that than the argument that Malcolm Gladwell makes in David and Goliath that many students would be better off attending a school where they are at the top of their class (i.e. their admission safety) rather than where they are in the lower part of the range (i.e. their admission reach).
Or perhaps some of the historically black schools may be better at nurturing students than many other schools, so that parents and students (whether or not they are black) looking for a more nurturing academic environment may want to consider those schools?
I took a completely different view of JHS’s comment; that the different (and successful) approach at Xavier should be emulated elsewhere. Am I wrong?
The point that Gladwell made has been made for the last 20 - 30 years and its still well taken.
Unfortunately the “compassionate” progressive “programs” of the do-gooders hasn’t really helped bump up the numbers in a significant way.
And yes there’s stats that breakdown by major what the various groups end up with. None of it is surprising.
A very good article but the point made isn’t new. It has been discussed at length in books like Mismatch with tons of concrete supporting data about why so many blacks fail the BAR exam. The only thing new here is the knowledge that accrediting agencies are the ones putting pressures on med schools and law schools to admit more under qualified URMs. We already know about the low BAR passing rate for blacks, now it’s time for medical schools to come clean and publish the dropout rate and board certification rate for URMs.
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