It Doesn't End With Getting In
Flat. Not better or worse, just flat. That was the trend that administrators at the University of Chicago saw in 2002 when they looked at rates of graduation for their black students over the past 20 years. "We did not have a clear picture of what we were doing as an institution to improve the number of minority students" attending and graduating, says Kenneth Warren, the school's deputy provost for research and minority issues.
While schools like UCLA strive to enroll more African-American students, the work doesn't end when those newly minted freshmen arrive on campus. The nationwide graduation rate for black students rose 4 percentage points to 43 percent between 2003 and 2006, but that figure is a full 20 percentage points lower than the average graduation rates for white students, according to a recent report in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.
A strong combination of academic, social, and financial support for students, especially those from minority groups, can help keep them on track toward graduation, experts say. Anthony Lising Antonio, a professor of education at Stanford University, argues that while expecting students to take personal responsibility for their academic careers is critical to their development, colleges have an obligation to ensure that more students leave with diplomas. "Public sentiment hasn't really placed responsibility at the feet of the institution," he says, "where it should be."
Of the 27 highly selective universities for which the Journal has long-term numbers, the black graduation rate improved an average of 9 percentage points at 24 institutions between 1998 and 2006. The largest increase—a jump from 60 percent to 83 percent—was at the private California Institute of Technology. However, the study notes that the relatively small number of black students at Caltech (fewer than 20 each year between 1999 and 2004) can create large statistical swings based on very few students.
At the University of Chicago, for the past two years, the school strengthened its mentoring program for minority undergraduates, beefed up summer prep programs for incoming students, and found more private sources for financial aid. As a result, the university's black graduation rate rose 13 percentage points between 1998 and 2006 to 82 percent. "There is no reason," Warren says, "why you can't get your minority student [graduation] numbers to look identical to your numbers for white students."
This story appears in the June 4, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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