News Briefs

Black college graduation rates can improve if colleges make it a priority

May 8, 2008 3:48 PM

Colleges know how to close gaps in the graduation rates between black and white students, but few are willing to do it, says a report from Education Sector, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

With federal DOE statistics showing the national six-year graduation rate for black students at four-year colleges some 20 percent lower than that for white students, the report found a number of colleges where black students graduate on a par with their peers.

How do they succeed?

“Successful colleges pay attention to graduation rates,” the report says. “They monitor year-to-year change, study the impact of different interventions on student outcomes, break down the numbers among different student populations, and continuously ask themselves how they could improve.”

And they don’t do it by cooking the numbers or through becoming more selective or otherwise altering their admissions criteria to take in a different student mix. Florida State and the University of Alabama have raised their black students’ graduation rates by improving how they serve students, especially those who are from low-income backgrounds or are among the first of their families to attend college.

What also works is “intrusive counseling,” where counselors actively watch over students instead of waiting for them to fail or ask for help. Providing state-financed scholarships to academically promising low-income students to prevent money worries from complicating their educational pursuits works, too.

Chronicle of Higher Education, April 21