Invisible is the new black

Last update: Tuesday 3/27/18

This morning's online edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education contained an article titled, "They Wanted Desegregation. They Settled for Money, and It’s About to Run Out." I suggest that this excellent article is a "must-read" for anyone concerned about the condition of Black students in U.S. higher education. I mean the 300,000 Black students who attend Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) ... AND ... the invisible 2.7 million Black students who attend non-HBCUs.

Booker T 2

Last updated: Tuesday 11/5/13 @ 7:16 am

Dr. John S. Wilson, the former Director of the White House Initiative on HBCUs and now President of Morehouse College, posted an op-ed in the Chronicle of Higher Education last year that was titled,"Wealthy Americans, Meet Historiclly Black Colleges. Again." (Chronicle, 11/5/12)

HBCUs -- the Best Producers of Black Graduates in STEM

Using data from the IPEDS Data Center, this note demonstrates that the HBCU community continues to be a more effective producer of black STEM graduates at the undergraduate level than the nation's non-HBCUs taken as a whole. To be more specific, HBCUs are almost twice as productive as non-HBCUs with regards to black female graduates in STEM and more than five times as productive of black female STEM graduates as the for-profit institutions that have enrolled substantial numbers of black undergraduates in recent years

Disruptive Innovations

Disruptive Innovations in a Turbulent Academic Environment

Who's Doing What???

Last updated: Thursday 12/12/13 ... Work in Progress 

The following table provides a compact framework for tracking the innovations in higher education that have received the most coverage/buzz in the academic and national media during the last few years.

Graduation Rates of Black Students at High STEM Colleges and Universities -- Part 1

Originally published in October 2012 ... Last revision: Thursday 8/8/14 @ 11:58 am

The revised version of this note has been relocated to ==> HERE

The DLL apologizes for this inconvenience

Earnings Lost by Opting Out of STEM -- updated 6/27

Yesterday (25 June 2012), the online editions of Inside Higher Education and the The Chronicle of Higher Education posted articles that called their readers' attention to a recently published research report, "The Earnings Benefits of Majoring in STEM Fields Among High Achieving Minority Students" by Tatiana Melguizo and Gregory C. Wolniak (Research in Higher Education, Volume 53, Number 4, 2012).

Washington, Du Bois, and Silicon Valley

One hundred plus years ago, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois  engaged in a protracted dispute:

Closing the Digital Divide -- Another Opportunity

The Persistence of the Digital Divide

The Digital Divide appears to morph, to shift its shape from time to time; but deep down it remains the same. Unfortunately, its changing skins-of-the-day have distracted attention from its underlying structure, i.e., the stronger communal networks that sustain increasing affluence on the "white" and "yellow" sides of the Divide vs. weaker networks associated with the shrinking shares of the nation's income and wealth on its "black" and "brown" sides. 

The Best HBCUs in STEM

The National Academies recently published another blue ribbon report that raises alarms about America's imminent decline as a major economic (and political) power due to our declining production of doctorates in science and technology relative to that of other nations. (See Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America's Science and Technology at the Crossroads.)

The HBCU Community as a National Laboratory for U.S. Higher Education

This blog refines a proposal that was introduced in an earlier blog -- "Why are HBCUs Still Needed? -- Part II"

A. Context

Although continued support for HBCUs is usually justified by references to their historic success in educating African Americans, nowadays eighty percent of African American students attend non-HBCUs. This suggests that their historic justification is a fading argument that may cause us to overlook the potential contributions that HBCUs could make tomorrow, not just to the African American students at HBCUs, but to African American students at non-HBCUs and to all students in the U.S. higher education system -- regardless of their race.

Two of the most important challenges facing HBCUs today also face the non-HBCUs -- fewer male students enroll and they drop out at higher rates than females; and female students enroll in STEM programs (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) at lower rates than males.

• The "bad news" is that fewer African American males enroll and they also drop out faster than Caucasian and Asian American males; and the proportion of African American females entering STEM programs is lower than for Caucasian and Asian American females. (Note that the performance of African American students is comparable to that of Latino and Native American students.)
  
  None of this should surprise anyone who is aware of the relative differences in social and economic capital available to most African American, Latino, Native American, Asian American, and Caucasian students because students who have access to more social and economic resources should be expected to be more successful in coping with the challenges of academic life.

• The "good news" is that solutions that work for HBCUs may also work for non-HBCUs having substantial African American enrollments, for other minorities at non-HBCUs, and possibly even for the socially and economically more advantaged Asian American and Caucasion students facing similar challenges. In other words, non-HBCUs should pay close attention to the successes and failures of HBCUs because they might learn useful things that could help them provide more productive educational experiences for their own students -- regardless of race.

B. HBCUs as a National Lab

An ideal collection of colleges and universities that would serve as a national laboratory for higher education would be a random sample that controlled for race.

• Most HBCUs are still predominantly Black, so one can assume that race and prejudice have minimal impact on their operations. (At least 93 of the 104 HBCUs have Black/non-Hispanic enrollments greater than 50 percent; this data is not available for five HBCUs.)
  
• Although not a random sample, the community of HBCUs is diverse enough for exploratory studies designed to generate insightful hypotheses about education policies and practices. The findings from these exploratory studies could then be proven or disproven by systematic trials conducted at rigorously sampled colleges and universities elsewhere in the U.S. higher education system.

The extraordinary diversity of the HBCU community bears elaboration:

• Location -- 22 states, districts, and territories
• Types -- 88 four year, 13 two year, and 3 specialized graduate training
• Public/Private 4 year -- 40 public, 48 private
• Public/Private 2 year -- 11 public, 2 private
• Enrollments -- smallest = 100 , largest = 9900 students
• Scope -- wide range of programs ranging from vocational training, associates, and bachelors degrees through professional, masters, and Ph.Ds degrees to multimillion dollar NSF/NIH/NASA funded research initiatives

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Related notes:

• Why are HBCUs Still Needed -- Part I
• Why are HBCUs Still Needed -- Part II
• Why are HBCUs Still Needed -- Part III
• A Black Student is a Black Student is a Black Student