The Education Trust released a report today documenting large graduation rate gaps between white, black, and Latino students at many colleges and universities. It includes a list of the worst offenders, the top of which is below, in descending order of disparity (the first number is the average six-year graduation rate for white students from 2006 to 2008, the second is the rate for black students):
Wayne State: 43.5 / 9.5
Cal State-Fresno: 55.9 / 24.1
Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania: 66.2 / 35.9
Kansas State: 60.7 / 30.5
The College of New Jersey: 87.5 / 58.7
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: 46.1 / 17.9
Cal State-Bakersfield: 47.2 / 19.2
Rowan University: 69.5 / 42.2
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater: 55.0 / 27.7
Wayne State stands out like a sore thumb on this list. It has the single biggest percentage-point gap between white and black students in America. The overall graduation rate for black students is in single digits. And unlike the rest of the institutions, where on average only about six percent of the student body is black, almost a third of Wayne State students are black. This is a Research I university than enrolls close to 7,000 black students in a given year and their graduation rate is nine percent. Even if you stretch the timeframe out to 8 or 10 years and include transfer students these are still terrible, terrible numbers. It’s depressing how the worst examples of everything seem to be in Detroit.
President Obama gave a speech about college graduation today. He had a lot of good things to say about simplifying the financial aid process, boosting Pell grants, investing in community colleges, and learning from successful institutions. He even mentioned Cleveland State community college, which I wrote about in the Chronicle last year.
But there was nothing about fixing low-performing universities. And if you’ve got a 9.5 percent six-year graduation rate for 7,000 black students, there’s something more troubling going on than a failure to adopt “best practices.” If the Obama administration doesn’t come up with a serious plan to help students at places like Wayne State, it’s not going to meet its lofty college graduation goals.
6 Responses to What’s the Matter with Wayne State?
jffoster - August 10, 2010 at 9:11 am
“worst offenders”??? Offenders against what to whom? Youm? Obaman? How do you know anything’s “wrong” with Wayne State? As to the President’s “lofty graduation goals” — there is nothing in the Constitution that says we have to jump when the Federal Government says “Education, Frog”.
andremayer - August 10, 2010 at 9:58 am
Wayne State, it seems to me, is inherently a school with a double nature. On the one hand, it is a Research I university. On the other, it is the local public institution serving a largely poor inner-city clientele. My guess is that Wayne State’s black graduation rate doesn’t “stick out like a sore thumb” compared urban comprehensives such as Chicago State and Cleveland State — but those campuses don’t have the more highly regarded programs that attract better-prepared, predominantly white students.
honore - August 12, 2010 at 8:50 am
I think a review of the “admissions” offices might answer the obvious question.
propson - August 12, 2010 at 1:48 pm
Wayne State, I have been told, admits virtually ANY student from the Detroit Public Schools, and remediates to whatever degree possible. This seems like a cruel policy to me, especially considering those abyssmal numbers.
backinblack - August 18, 2010 at 9:58 pm
Propson, your source is incorrect. WSU does not accept virtually ANY student from the DPS.
huck_ - October 29, 2010 at 3:52 pm
The original article from Education Trust is very poorly researched. Yes, WSU and LTU have the largest graduation gaps, but they also have the largest ACT score gaps between white and black students when they are admitted.
They are saying that University of North Carolina students have the smallest graduation gaps, but maybe this is because their black and white students performed the same in high school (which is not the case for WSU and LTU students).
How should I know that UNC does a better job that WSU when the comparison in terms of ACT scores between the white and black populations, a critical piece of information, is missing? The reviewers of this article did not do their jobs.