Dedrick Cotton received his K-12 education at an urban school on the east side of Detroit where he felt most of his teachers were more focused on bringing home a week-to-week paycheck than on his academic success.
Now a social science sophomore, vice president of student group Successful Black Men and a member of the Black Student Alliance, Cotton is one of a large group of minority students who, according to a recent report, have been underserved by universities, including MSU.
The report, released last month, has led MSU officials and student groups to look into ways to create change. MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon stressed reducing the gap as one of her main priorities at the start of the semester.
“We’ve got to think through these issues in a way that feeds into this broader question about how we move and shake in the future,” Simon said during an Executive Committee of Academic Council meeting.
Now, almost a month into the semester, university administrators are looking into student services and the Neighborhood Concept with bridging the gap in mind. The services could be a potential engine for change at MSU, which is on the top 25 list of “big gaps” between retention rates of white students and non-white students, according to the report by the Education Trust.
The Education Trust is a national organization that promotes academic achievement. Mamie Lynch, higher education research and policy analyst for the organization, said MSU is graduating its Caucasian students at about a 78 percent retention rate, its black students at about a 56 percent rate and its Hispanic students at about 57 percent rate.
The issue is also being targeted by Cotton’s group, Successful Black Men.
After seeing his brother grow up at a suburban school with more dedicated teachers, Cotton knew he had been put at a disadvantage in preparing for college. But he was determined to not become a statistic.
“We need to look at everything,” he said. “We need to look at the staff, the faculty, the colleges and see what’s missing. Knowing I’m going to get my degree makes me feel that I need to help others. You want to help people out and support them in any way you can.”
Where MSU is
President Barack Obama recently made a goal for the U.S. to reclaim the position of highest number of college graduates globally by 2020. Without attention to minority groups who have been underserved by higher education, the goal won’t be attainable, Lynch said.
MSU has the fourth largest national gap in disparities between retention rates of Caucasian and Hispanic students while holding the 23rd largest gap in disparities between the rates of Caucasian and black students, according to the study.
“MSU is serving their white students pretty well,” she said. “So Michigan State should really be able to help their African-American and Hispanic students do the same.”
English junior Emily Jarema said she was surprised by the statistics, but hoped university officials would create programs to fix the problem.
“I would hope that more people of other cultures would stay,” she said. “I guess most of the population here is white.”
Although university officials are aware of the problem, vice president for student affairs and services Lee June said gap size does not tell everything there is to know about an institution. Noting that overall graduation rates have increased in the past few years, June said of the 25 schools the report identifies as having “small gaps,” 18 of them have lower graduation rates for Hispanic and black students than MSU does.
“There are a lot of things going on at Michigan State that are not evident from gaps,” he said. “We still graduate half of our Latino and African-American students at higher rates than those schools.”
Simon said the gap has been present at MSU for a long time. The university has been able to increase graduation rates through time and has seen these rates rise above the exemplars set in the Education Trust study, she said.
“The gap has widened a bit instead of closed because the graduating rates of Caucasian students have grown a bit faster than those of students of color,” Simon said.
How MSU got there
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Administrators attribute a multitude of factors in creating the gap in retention rates including high school background, socioeconomic conditions, university dynamics and the success of support systems. Senior associate provost June Youatt said it is not solely an MSU problem.
“We haven’t been able to solve (the problem), which is to our disappointment,” she said. “But if you look at every school where this is true, they’re committed to providing an opportunity to a wide array of students because they honestly believe that students deserve a chance at success.”
Simon said non-white students typically come from more strenuous socioeconomic backgrounds and thus live in urban centers with a higher proportion of at-risk high schools.
“They perform very well in those schools, but the education experience may not be as strong as students coming from other schools that are predominantly white schools,” she said.
“It’s not a lack of ability or lack of passion and effort. It’s simply the fact that they didn’t have the opportunity to be exposed to a high quality high school.”
But Gabriela Alcazar, a social relations and policy senior and member of Latino student group Culturas de las Razas Unidas, said the university has shied away from creating programs for minority students. She said the statistics are not surprising.
“Every day, I see Latino students struggling for various reasons and see a blatant disregard by the university,” Alcazar said.
Where MSU is going
First introduced two years ago, administrators hope that the Neighborhood Concept, currently in its pilot stages in Hubbard Hall, will help close the gap in retention rates by honing in on supporting students academically.
Youatt said neighborhoods are envisioned to be communities of people around campus, not physical places, and will create an integrated set of support services.
“The idea behind the neighborhood concept is that you need to have a readily accessible array of integrated and holistic services instead of getting one set of suggestions in one place and another set in another place,” she said. “It’s a different way to serve students so that there’s someone who really gets to know you.”
Simon said although students have expressed concerns about losing the cultural services offered on campus such as the Office of Cultural and Academic Transitions and the Office for Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives after budget cuts and the creation of the Neighborhood Concept, she doesn’t see it as an either-or situation. The programs are still there, she said.
“We’re working to best align the work of those offices with the concept,” she said. “Many of the program structures we have today are products of the 60s and 70s and our students are simply different today. You have to think about these programs and how they can best be used for the students of today and tomorrow.”
Simon said a review is underway of the Office of Campus Living and Department of Residential Life to re-examine their work in this area as well. Meetings with students and faculty have been and will continue to be an instrumental part of the process, June said.
He also said early invention programs in academics that engage students struggling early on have been implemented and the university is looking at expanding summer bridge programs that prepare incoming freshmen for college life.
And students haven’t left the situation solely in the hands of administrators.
Many groups, like Cotton’s and Alcazar’s, are focusing on propelling success of disadvantaged minority groups through programming and support services.
“If anything, (the gap) makes me more motivated to help myself and help other people, fellow Latino students, to be able to get there,” Alcazar said. “If we don’t take our future into our own hands, no one else will.”
