November 7, 2008

Study Finds Blacks Reap Smaller Financial Gains From Certain Majors

Jacksonville, Fla. — Black students who major in high-paying fields appear to reap smaller financial gains when they enter the job market than do comparable Asian- and Hispanic-American students, according to a new study of minority scholarship applicants.

The study, scheduled to be discussed here tomorrow at the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, tracked about 350 students who had applied for the Gates Millennium Scholars Program for low-income minority students and had gone through its selection process. The students, who graduated from high school in the spring of 2000 and entered college the following academic year, were surveyed by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago at various intervals until six years after their graduation from high school.

Because the Gates program looks well beyond the SAT scores of scholarship applicants, and examines a host of psychological traits related to college persistence and early earnings, focusing on that population helped the researchers ensure comparability among the students being studied.

Even when comparable students majored in the same fields, the economic benefits they reaped from college upon entering the job market varied substantially by race and ethnicity, according to a paper on the study’s findings by Tatiana Melguizo, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Southern California, and Gregory C. Wolniak, a research scientist at the National Opinion Research Center.

The salary premium that Asian- and Hispanic-American students received from majoring in science, technology, mathematics, or engineering was 50 percent higher than what black students who had majored in those fields were earning soon after college, the study found. Asian- and Hispanic-American students also reaped a higher salary premium than did black students for majoring in professional fields such as business or law.

The researchers say they did not look into whether discrimination explained the gaps they found because they did not have sufficient data matching students with their employers. They found some evidence that variations in occupational choices may play a role, but said more research was needed there as well.

Their paper concludes that, “in a scholarship program or campus-based policies aimed at promoting economic outcomes, attention needs to be placed on how and why students choose their field of study, as well as the manner in which their education influences their occupational attainment.” —Peter Schmidt

Comments

1. Students who were not taught logical and mathematical skills in primary school, as African-American students often aren’t, will be at a disadvange in the application of those skills, even if they have all the knowledge required to graduate – it is the application of primary-school skills, to knowledge learned later, that is rewarded at work. As long as African-American students are short-changed when abstract skills are taught in the early grades (for example, I’ve met some who were taught to tell time by rote, and were never taught the principles of modulo-arithmetic) they will continue to lose ground later on.

   — Adam Reed    Nov 7, 05:16 PM    #

2. I’ve never heard of modulo-arithmetic, and I’ve done fairly well as a Ph.D.

   — pajamas    Nov 7, 06:51 PM    #

3. Perhaps you haven’t, pajamas, but you probably do know how to tell time and use mathematics to manipulate minutes seconds and hours to get things like elapsed time. If so, you know the principles of modulo arithmetic, which is, I infer, what Adam was aiming at. I am not, on the other hand, sure his supposition regarding the racial biases in the teaching of abstract skills is correct. I am seeing this problem pretty much across the board, and not limited to African Americans.

   — Robert    Nov 7, 07:16 PM    #

4. pajamas,

   In “science, technology, mathematics, or engineering?” If so, you would probably be doing even better, if you had.

   — Adam Reed    Nov 7, 07:20 PM    #

5. Robert,

   Conjectures on biases and trends cannot be disconfirmed or confirmed without statistics, but I’ve seen enough specific instances to expect that the statistics – if someone did the study, which I think should be done – would show a significant trend.

   — Adam Reed    Nov 7, 07:29 PM    #

6. I teach at a historically African-American college, and I see no evidence whatsoever to support Reed’s claims.

   What Reed has done is to assume that whatever disparities there are reflect deficiencies in the education of African—Americans, deficiencies that represent a life-long and virtually irremediable handicap.

   There might not be enough data to prove that some of the discrepancies in salary are related to discriminatory practices, but there certainly is no data whatsoever to support Reed’s wild speculations.

   I can assure you that my students tell time just like everyone else—and I can tell from this thread that there are some people “out there” who are going to assume, without any evidence whatsoever, that African-American students are deficient in one way or another.

   This is offensive in the extreme. It might seem to be a bit less offensive than saying that blacks are genetically inferior to whites, but it provides the same kind of rationales for differential treatment in the workplace.

   This is racism emerging in another form, and it is not only offensive but deleterious to any real effort to bring African-Americans into the mainstream of American society where equality of opportunity in the workplace is concerned.

   Landrum Kelly, Jr., Ph.D.
   Chair, Department of History and Political Science
   Livingstone College

   — Landrum Kelly    Nov 7, 07:34 PM    #

7. > I can assure you that my [black] students tell time just like everyone else

   Dr. Kelly, that’s what I had always assumed too. (I’m just an average science teacher.) But then I attended a formal training session on cultural diversity, given by a paid expert hired by my university. That person taught us specifically that black people don’t tell time the same way white people do. When a white person says “3pm” he means “3pm.” When a black person says “3pm” he means “sometime in the afternoon.”

   As I say, I didn’t know this, but that’s what I was taught in the diversity training program, so now I know it’s true.

   — science teacher    Nov 7, 09:41 PM    #

8. Reed, give it a rest.

   — Landrum Kelly    Nov 7, 09:59 PM    #

9. If non-blacks don’t experience discrimination they will never admit that it exists. Hopefully one of these days, they will. Perhaps not in my life-time. I know that whatever goes up must come down. I cannot understand why non-blacks are so insecure and afriad to admit the truth about themselves.

   — Amen    Nov 7, 10:16 PM    #

10. Could the black students have found better more satisfying jobs that just didn’t pay as much….I hope the results of the study offer better guidance than this posted article.

    — G Lovett    Nov 7, 11:37 PM    #

11. Lundrum,

    I do not post under pseudonyms – and your assumption that “science teacher” could be me, seems to be a sign of a non-objective agenda. For your information, I teach in a high-technology discipline, in an urban university, and African-Americans are some of my best-performing students. When I supplement the official curriculum with material on logic and mathematics that some of my students missed in primary school, they go on to advance in their subsequent classes and jobs just like Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians and the occasional immigrant from Europe or the Middle East. But needing to make up for deficiencies in our students’ primary education requires being aware of those deficiencies. Pretending that all of our incoming students are equally well prepared would have the effect of real racism. As it is, your accusation of racism against me goes a long way to discredit the rest of your posting – which would be a shame, because your expertise in history and political science could have brought a useful perspective to this discussion.

    — Adam Reed    Nov 7, 11:55 PM    #

12. Reed, the primary problem with your post is that it purports to address the issue of the cause of salary disparities, since that is what the article is about.

    You seem to either assume or jump very, very prematurely to the conclusion that salary disparities for African-Americans are overwhelmingly a result of lack of preparation. That conclusion then provides the basic premise for everything else that you say.

    No one is denying that under-preparation exists and must be remedied. To do so would be irresponsible. Disadvantaged students do require special efforts. What I am challenging is your rush to infer that which cannot be logically inferred from the data, i.e., that SALARY DIFFERENTIALS involving African-Americans are overwhelmingly a result of under-preparation. Although under-preparation resulting from lack of prior educational opportunity (regardless of race) could and probably does play a role in salary differentials, one needs to present evidence that that is indeed the relevant explanatory variable in the present case. You have presented no such evidence, but have instead rushed to judgment, throwing in a few anecdotal claims about some supposed inability of African-Americans to tell time in a logical manner and otherwise to deal with matters that require basic logical processes. I am not sure to what extent we can be taught to be logical—and I sometimes teach formal logic and have given this question some serious thought. What we can do in formal scientific and mathematical inquiry is to present evidence of faulty logic, and that is what I am doing in your case. (My own background before switching to political theory/philosophy was chemistry and mathematics, and so I so appreciate your own background and credentials.)

    I am sorry, but my conclusion stands in the face of your one-sided a priori assumption as to the cause of the salary disparities in question. On the best interpretation and scenario, you are a very bad scientist if you typically make such strong inferences from a priori assumptions and dubious anecdotal data.

    On the worst scenario, you reinforce a racial stereotype without offering any hard evidence to support your point of view.

    The reinforcement of a racial stereotype without hard evidence is indeed an example of what can reasonably be called racism, even if it is not deliberate or mean-spirited. Indeed, throughout history and continuing to the present, one may hypothesize that most racism has indeed been based more on ignorance than on malice. That claim would require argumentation and the presentation of hard data, but I would be prepared to argue it if we had but space and time in which to do it.

    Landrum Kelly

    — Landrum Kelly    Nov 8, 05:50 AM    #

13. Asian-Americans and Hispanic-Americans have strong family units. Blacks do not.

    The failure of 40+ years of the liberal policies which have destroyed the black community?

    Hmmmm…

    — TRB    Nov 8, 11:00 AM    #

14. “The failure of 40+ years of the liberal policies which have destroyed the black community?”

    We have not had forty plus years of liberal policies. The Reagan Revolution began in 1981, twenty-eight years ago come January, 2009. In fact, however, by the mid-seventies the Great Society legislative agenda of Lyndon B. Johnson had been stopped almost in its tracks.

    What we have actually been living through is over a quarter century of neglect.

    Another thing to keep in mind as we watch unemployment statistics climb is that unemployment rates for young black males has been at Depression levels for quite some time now—and those numbers are getting worse as the economy worsens.

    It would be an interesting social experiment to see how “white” families would be bearing up now if the unemployment figures in that segment of society were likewise over twenty percent.

    Thus do we care—really care—when we read of income disparities, regardless of the various causes.

    — Landrum Kelly    Nov 8, 11:17 AM    #

15. As a professor of criminal justice, my students, AfAm, Asian, Latino, et al will not suffer salary disparities because they enter the public sector where salaries are not “competitive” in the truest sense of the word. However, I have found over the years that many students show a contempt for timeliness. Perhaps it’s the result of TV on demand where there is no need to tune in anymore at the scheduled time for the broadcast. I also note that students carry those habits to the campus. But I have a cure for that, and it works. Within 2 sessions, I can get 100% compliance with class start times. It’s called post-time. I explain the concept with the horse or dog racing model. If you are late to the starting line, you are scratched. Period. This is especially effective with test start times. Admittedly, one must be prepared to say no and mean it (a problem for many professors, I know), but we are doing them a disservice to allow their on-demand lifestyles to drive our learning environment. As for modulo-arithmetic, what a pity to learn that kids can’t tell time before they go to school. But they will know how important it is to get to the civil service test on time!

    — BC PROF    Nov 8, 01:18 PM    #

16. Why so much changing of the topic from the actual study that this article reports on? The study finds that Blacks who majored in certain high paying fields end up having careers that are less high paying than for whites. The study is based on majors in certain fields – it’s a study of Blacks and whites who have comparable credentials, right? But different outcomes. How to explain such divergent outcomes? Most of these commentators are off-point, as they suggest explainations not consistent with the pool studied – high achieving students who majored in the same fields, yet experience different job market rewards. Maybe the Black family structure is the reason; maybe it’s social policy; maybe it can be explained by numerology. But the most likely reason for the different outcomes seems to be employment discrimination. Remember the Texaco “jelly bean” scandal of 20 years ago? There’s lots of conscious and unconscious prejudice in America today. At least, this is a hypothesis that is related to the evidence.

    — Mark    Nov 8, 02:23 PM    #

17. Mark,

    I do not disagree with your hypothesis. I would simply like to point out that the comparison is not between Blacks and Whites, but between Blacks and Asians and Hispanics. Sociologist Herbert Gans and others suggest that the racial paradigm in America is changing from Black and White to Black and non-Black. The results of this study might be evidence for such a paradigm shift.

    — joel cairo    Nov 8, 03:30 PM    #

18. WOW! I’m a student pursuing my degree in early childhood education and was doing research for my paper on diversity….I found a bee’s nest instead. I recently cast my vote for the new President-Elect and I voted for three reasons: I respect him, I trust him, and he’s black! No, I’m not black and yes, I may have some tinges of racism because of my southern white background, but I do feel that the majority of African -Americans have been stigmatized and stereo-typed and it does affect their whole perspective on success. I love children, purple or green, it doesn’t matter to me. What does matter is what we do from this day forward. Eventually, diversity will be the norm.What will we be prejudiced about then?

    — Sandy    Nov 9, 07:27 PM    #

19. As one of the possible topic changers, let me provide my underlying thinking: a person’s concept of time drives every other aspect of his/her life. This includes the possible success one finds in high paying professions as well as the modest but predictable public sector.

    Sorry, Mark, if this “explanaition”(sic) still doesn’t meet the mark on topic-centeredness.

    — BC PROF    Nov 9, 08:02 PM    #

20. Maybe the facts are that there are less blacks going into these fields then Asians and Hispanics so employers feel they are better qualified. Or maybe blacks are not staying in the jobs as long and working their way up the food chain. Or maybe still since affirmative action really does not help Asian and Hispanics as much as it does black employers feel they earned their way and where not handed it to them by law. Work ethic does go a long way in paying a person, and whether it is true or not Asian and Hispanics have a better perceived work ethic. Food for thought… get rid of affirmative action… let the strong survive.

    — Remember the Alamo    Nov 10, 01:17 PM    #

21. Remember the Alamo –

    How do you assess and make judgments on one’s work ethic? And can you make this assessment people from different racial & cultural backgrounds in the same fashion?

    — Lauren    Nov 11, 01:43 PM    #

22. Mark, It’s actually called polychronic or fluid time, (vs. monochronic or fixed time), as CPs are not the only people to arrive late.

    — Carolyn    Nov 11, 04:48 PM    #

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