College-completion rates for minority students tend to lag behind overall averages, and a report released on Wednesday by the American Council on Education examines why.
The report—"The Education Gap: Understanding African-American and Hispanic Attainment Disparities in Higher Education,” the first in a series on diversity and inclusion—explores some well-documented patterns, including in academic preparation, and points to entrenched discrepancies in access.
Underrepresented students, especially at four-year colleges, are more likely than their peers to hold multiple risk factors for dropping out, says the report, which analyzes federal data and was financed by the GE Foundation.
African-American and Hispanic students are significantly less likely, for example, to have taken advanced mathematics courses or earned college credit in high school, the report says, in part because their schools may not have offered a rigorous curriculum.
Less than half of black and Hispanic students—46 percent and 43 percent, respectively—who started college in 2003-4 took an advanced math course in high school, compared with 55 percent of all students, according to the report. Less than a fifth of black students and just over a quarter of Hispanic students earned college-level credits, compared with nearly a third of all students who entered college that year.
Across all demographic groups, completion rates were higher for students who had earned some credit ahead of time, says the report. Among Hispanic students, the measure for those with existing credit was 50 percent higher than for those without.
In terms of when and how students attend college, enrollment delays and part-time attendance correlate with lower completion rates for all groups, the report says, citing prior research. Across institutional types, African-American students were most likely to hold off on entering college. Those at four-year institutions who had delayed enrolling showed a 32-percent completion rate, compared with 54 percent for the black students who had started right after high school.
At four-year colleges—but not two-year institutions—African-American students were more likely than their classmates to enroll part time, according to the report. Hispanic students more often attended part time in both sectors.
Transfer, which also correlates with lower completion rates, was more common than average among black and Hispanic freshmen at four-year colleges. At two-year institutions, the discrepancy between plans to transfer to a four-year college and actually doing so was greater for black and Hispanic students than for white and Asian-American students.
Other factors the report examines include students’ placement into remedial education, type of high-school credential (diploma versus GED), and employment while in college.
“Even under favorable conditions for student success,” the report says, persistence and attainment rates for black and Hispanic students lagged behind those for their white classmates.
“The confluence of multiple impediments,” the report says, “is one of the keys to explaining the pervasiveness of the postsecondary attainment gaps.” But those disparities, ACE says, are not unresolvable—and minimizing them is necessary to achieving national college-completion goals.
Advocacy groups have made similar pronouncements, with recommendations for effective policy and practice. Of course, as this report notes, controlling college costs and expanding financial aid would help, but so can “deliberate efforts” in academic support.
“A one-time or one-dimensional policy will not move these students far enough toward college graduation,” Mikyung Ryu, associate director of ACE’s Center for Policy Analysis and author of the report, said in a written statement. “The higher-education community and our colleagues in K-12 must work together to take action.”