A recent report revealed some place MSU among the top 25 public universities regarding the gap in graduation rates between Caucasian students and black students. It is a problem that needs attention, but first the university needs to figure out where the issue is stemming from.
The Education Trust, a group that focuses on academic equality among races, along with data from MSU’s Office of Planning and Budgets, published the statistics stating Caucasian students had about a 78 percent six-year graduation rate between 2006 and 2008, opposed to roughly 56 percent for black students. The gap amounts to about 22 percent.
Although the numbers are powerful, they might be deceiving.
According to a college portrait of MSU facts and figures published by the university in fall 2007, there were 27,914 Caucasian undergraduate students — 77 percent of the student body — in comparison to only 2,899 black students, roughly eight percent of the population. These figures show that a single black student has more of an effect on the calculations than a single Caucasian student.
The size of the black population at MSU likely could be a factor in why the graduation gap is so large.
Whether the report properly is scaled or not, the university still needs to take notice when any collection of students have low graduation rates.
Whether a students graduates or not is mostly a matter of personal motivation on the part of the student. But coming into MSU, some students might not have received the necessary skills needed to succeed in college, even if they reached admissions grade-point average and test score requirements.
Physiology junior Brian Harvey told The State News in a recent article (“MSU sees graduation rate gap between races” 3/16) his Detroit high school did not prepare him with adequate study habits.
“A lot of us don’t come from areas that have up-to-par educational systems of higher financial status, and it does have an effect,” he said. “But it’s not an excuse or (a reason) for anyone to feel sorry for African Americans, because at the end of the day … that shapes us and drives us to do better.”
Harvey is the president of The Advantage, a campus group that works to help individual students develop successful study habits in college, solidifying their motivation to do well. One way to strengthen the accountability students have in their performance is for them to surround themselves with equally studious people. It’s easy to feel alone in college, but by finding people who share similar interests and the same motivation for success makes it easier for students to prosper and not become a statistic.
The university should look at different methods that could be used to minimize the graduation gap between blacks and Caucasians. By looking into successful, student-orientated groups — such as The Advantage — the university could work to develop different programs or methods that will bring to light ways to lessen the graduation gap.
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