November 11, 2007

Minority Students Fare Better in Colleges When High-School Classmates Also Enroll, Researchers Say

Black and Hispanic college freshmen perform better academically if their entering class includes substantial numbers of other students from their high school, according to findings presented by researchers in Washington over the weekend at a conference of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

The researchers — Marta Tienda, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University, and Jason M. Fletcher, an assistant professor of public health at Yale University — took data from the University of Texas at Austin and examined what happened to the achievement of minority students there after the flagship campus established a scholarship program aimed at increasing enrollments from low-income high schools that it had drawn few students from before.

The researchers were primarily interested in how college freshmen benefit from having substantial peer networks. Unable to research and map out the peer networks of each student at UT-Austin, they decided as a proxy to calculate the number, and racial and ethnic makeup, of students coming to the university from each high school.

One of the researchers’ initial observations was how much race- and ethnicity-based variation existed in peer networks, largely as a result of the high level of segregation in Texas’ public high schools. For example, the average white freshman entered UT-Austin alongside more than 30 students from his or her high-school class, 23 of whom were white, but the average black student entering the university did so alongside fewer than 20 students from his or her high school, only one of whom was black.

The researchers found that black students who watched just one additional black student from their high school enroll alongside them had first-semester grade-point averages that, on average, were 0.13 points higher than they would have been otherwise. Hispanic students experienced similar benefits from enrolling alongside Hispanic students from their own high school, and reaped some benefit from having a large network of fellow graduates of their high school of any race or ethnicity.

Ms. Tienda and Mr. Fletcher have not yet published their paper discussing their findings. Ms. Tienda says that in the five months since they wrote it, she and other researchers have looked at other colleges and universities and come up with similar results. —Peter Schmidt

Comments

1. That can’t be very surprising. It’s called a support group and it’s likely true for every student, not just minority students. Certainly being in a minority would make the ability to find peers that more challenging, and it’s something administrators do need to be aware of.

   — John    Nov 12, 08:14 AM    #

2. This is valuable information for all of us to know. It makes sense that students will achieve higher marks in college if they attend with others from the same high school, especially if they work as a unit or some variation of a small learning community.

   William Allan Kritsonis, PhD

   — William Allan Kritsonis    Nov 12, 10:26 AM    #

3. It appears this data would support the Posse model for enrolling low-income students of color in college.

   — Rick    Nov 12, 09:05 PM    #

4. Cultural influences and peer pressure (positive or negative) have a greater impact on minority yield and retention than main stream academia knows, or admits. Something must happen in the communities (of all races), before young people reach college age, to change attitudes about education. Inequitable financial aid policies that award more money based on skin color, help some students at the expense of others. Many poor students with little melanin in their skin are first generation college students, and did not grow up in a culture supportive of higher education. These students are suffering financially in college, or not enrolling at all. They are borrowing more loans than their counterparts with darker skin because the point this article makes is being ignored. It is more about culture than money.

   Many surveys have shown that additional money directed toward minority students increases somewhat the number that attend, but unfortunately do not increase noticeably the graduation rates. Martin Luther King’s dream, that children should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, is not even close to fruition. Financial aid based on skin color is wrong!

   Please do not try to guess how much melanin is in my skin, you may be wrong.

   — Observer    Nov 13, 01:02 PM    #

5. Observer, do you have any idea what percentage of financial aid uses race or ethnicity as an eligibility criteria? Nationwide the number is less than one-quarter of one percent. How that can skew any data is beyond me.

   — DS    Nov 13, 02:18 PM    #

6. The end of this exchange made me chuckle. Well done, DS.

   — guest    Nov 24, 11:24 PM    #

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