Raising Minority Graduation Rates in College

Many university programs with similar goals stop there, Carey says, "trusting that the students have been inoculated against the risk of failure by their summer orientation." The Florida State CARE officials consider that assumption too risky. "CARE keeps right on going," Carey says, "monitoring students' progress all the way to graduation and serving, in the words of William E. Hudson Jr., associate director of academic programs for CARE since its inception, as 'advocates for student success.' The center operates a tutorial lab staffed by graduate students from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Students are required to attend the lab for at least eight hours per week--10 if their grades begin to slip. If they don't complete the required number of hours, they can't register for their next set of classes."

Some university educators might argue that this goes to far--they are these students' professors, not their mothers. Many of them are my age, and long ago adopted the sink-or-swim view of college, illustrated by the lectures we got freshman year suggesting we introduce ourselves to the students to the left and right of us, and be assured that at least one of the three of us would be gone by the end of the year. This Darwinian view assumes that low-income, first-generation students are going to wash out in large number no matter what you do for them, but the Florida state program proves that to be old fuddy-duddy hogwash. The CARE students enter Florida State with an average SAT reading and math score of 940, which nationally leads to a six-year graduation rate of about 56 percent. Non-CARE students enter with an average score of 1204, which usually leads to a 73 percent graduation rate. "Yet CARE students are more likely than non-CARE students at FSU to return for their sophomore year," Carey says, "and they ultimately graduate at almost exactly the same rate."

Why haven't all the other colleges done this? Some say they have. Nice-sounding descriptions of anti-dropout programs abound on university Web sites. But Carey cites reports from Pell Institute researchers who persuaded officials at some universities to confess what actually happened to their splendid plans in return for not revealing which schools they were talking about.

The Pell report said: "Staff members showed binders full of agendas and reports from numerous retention committees that had convened and consultants who had visited over the past 10 years. As they described, the retention plans that resulted were either not implemented or were implemented piecemeal, without enough funds, or for too short a time to be effective. As a result, faculty and staff at this institution were reluctant to participate in current efforts to improve retentions. As one staff member said, 'How many times can we sit on a committee and say the same things and nothing gets done?'"

I asked Carey how he interpreted the difference between Trinity and Catholic in black-white graduation gaps. Catholic's latest reported gap of 47 percentage points in 2006 was unusually large, he said. Its average over the last few years has been 36 percentage points -- although that, he noted, is "still terrible." One crucial difference between the schools, he noted, is that more than 60 percent of Trinity undergraduates are black. Its faculty and administrators have to make the black graduation rate a high priority, Carey said, or "they'd be out of business." Only 6 percent of Catholic students are black, and that may explain why their graduation rate has received less attention.

What do Trinity and Catholic officials say about this? Trinity spokeswoman Ann Pauley said: "We are very proud of our track record and are always striving to do better. In fact, we have this year revitalized our curriculum to strengthen the academic skills of our students which will in turn improve their retention and graduation rates." Trinity President Patricia A. McGuire said she didn't like Carey suggesting that her school's success was "driven by mercenary principles" when the actual motive was its "sense of justice."

W. Michael Hendricks, vice president for enrollment management at Catholic, said the school has made a big improvement from the cohort of students who enrolled in 2000 and before, as reported by Carey. In the class that enrolled in 2001, he said, the six-year graduation rate was 63 percent for African American students, compared to 69 percent for white students. "We expect to see this improvement continue in subsequent cohorts because we are committed to providing students the programs and services they need to be successful," Hendricks said.

Carey's analysis of the graduation rates at dozens of colleges, and his recommendations for improvement, are refreshingly clear. And the reaction from Hendricks at Catholic indicates that some schools are giving this high priority. Hopefully, that will become a trend.