Diverse College Performance And Graduation Rates

The Chronicle of Higher Education blog this morning points to a new report, “Eliminating Racial Disparities in College Completion and Achievement: Current Initiatives, New Ideas, and Assessment.”

The Report begins by noting, accurately enough, that “[i]n order to close racial and ethnic gaps in educational attainment, it is necessary to focus on closing gaps in both college enrollment, and college achievement and graduation.” [Emphasis in original]

Although the Grutter and Gratz rulings were major victories for supporters of diversity, each is only a means to an end. The ultimate goal has never been to bring diverse cohorts into colleges and universities. This is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for achieving the real goal, which has always been to educate and graduate students of all races and ethnicities at similar rates. Achieving this goal requires that we not only dramatically increase the number of minority students who are ready to attend college; we must also close racial and ethnic gaps in college performance and completion.

The “racial and ethnic gaps in college performance and completion” are indeed severe, as the Report notes.

Evidence of the need to focus on college completion appears in recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics, which report six‐year graduation rates of 71% for Asian Americans, 67% for whites, 47% for Latinos, and 46% for African Americans. Graduation rates are substantially higher at selective colleges and universities, yet racial and ethnic disparities persist. For the cohort of students who entered 28 selective schools in 1989, the six‐year graduation rate was 96% for Asian Americans, 94% for whites, 90% for Latinos, and 79% for African Americans.

In addition to finding disturbing racial and ethnic disparities in college completion, research also suggests that minority students are substantially less satisfied with their college experiences than are whites. Minority students are also less likely to say that they would recommend their college to prospective students who are similar to themselves.

Finally, and at this point it would be surprising if the following finding were surprising,

there is clear evidence that racial and ethnic disparities exist not just in graduation rates and satisfaction, but also in performance. Recent data for Duke University show that although students of all races can be found throughout the GPA distribution, the average black or Latino student earns lower grades than does the average white or Asian American student.

These findings are strikingly similar to what UCLA law professor Richard Sander has found in law schools, which I’ve discussed here many times.

The Report is convinced that in order to narrow the racial gap in performance and completion it is necessary to improve the “racial climate” on campuses.

Put simply, whites and Asians do not only tend to graduate and achieve at higher rates than blacks and Latinos because they tend to have higher test scores at admission. It is also the case that, on average, college contexts advantage whites and Asians and disadvantage blacks and Latinos. …. Blacks and Latinos tend to be racial/ethnic and economic minorities at elite colleges and universities. As a result, they may not feel like full members of the campus community, and may not take full advantage of the intellectual and social opportunities available to them. Abundant evidence shows that minority student comfort on campus is affected by the racial composition of students, staff, and faculty, as well as the campus racial climate. This means that schools must go beyond creating a campus that has racial diversity, and create an environment in which diversity and inclusion are engaged and embraced

The bulk of the Report consists of descriptions of a number of actual programs, and some hypothetical ones, that the authors consider models for other institutions to follow.

In looking over these summaries, as well as the Report’s own assumptions and conclusions, I was struck by the absence of two obvious remedies to the racial performance and completion gap. First, as the experience of the University of California has begun to show, eliminating racial preferences in admissions goes a long way toward eliminating both the racial performance and completion gap. Eliminating preferences would also have the beneficial effect of eliminating much of the discomfort minorities experience of “not feel[ing] like full members of the campus community,” of fearing that they don’t belong.

But since treating applicants equally, i.e., without regard to their race or ethnicity, appears to be impossible for most college administrators to contemplate, unless forced to do so by the voters of their state (and even then), there is another obvious solution, one that is perfectly congruent with — indeed, would seem to flow directly from — the practice of lowering the admissions bar for members of preferred minority groups: lowering the graduation requirements for those who were preferentially admitted.

Since administrators seem addicted to the practice of lowering the admissions for some students, who will then predictably earn lower grades and drop out in higher numbers than their peers, they obviously have no objection in principle to different standards for different racial and ethnic groups. It’s almost inconsistent of them not to lower grading and graduation standards as well.