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But Students, Statistics Point to Continuing Problems, Including Low Graduation Rates for Minorities
By Charmere Gatson Maryland Newsline Friday, May 21, 2004 COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Hiram Whittle, now 73, walked in the spring of 1951 onto a predominately white campus at the University of Maryland, College Park, when he transferred from the all-black Morgan State University. Whittle was the first and only black undergraduate living and learning on campus. But to him, there was “no shock” in breaking a color barrier three years before the Supreme Court would rule against public school desegregation. “Those college kids were the same as college kids at Morgan State,” Whittle said in a recent interview. That mostly white campus that Whittle recalled has been transformed today into what many faculty, staff and students say is a 1,500-acre melting pot. “I see more diversity here on campus than I’ve seen my entire life,” said Matthew Feinstein, 19, who came to Maryland from New Jersey. Of the 33,000 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled at the state’s flagship campus this spring, about 28 percent are minorities: blacks, American Indians, Hispanics and Asian-Americans, according to the university’s Office of Institutional Research and Planning. But while statistics show the campus is ethnically diverse, they also reveal there’s work to be done. The research and planning office reports, for instance, that graduation rates for black students seriously trail those for whites.“The university might have good intentions to create a diverse environment,” said Cameron Poles, 27, a black graduate student who is working toward a doctoral degree in educational psychology. “But because there are no efficient and organized efforts to analyze the problem [of increasing minority numbers], then the remedies are sort of hit and miss. And that’s not fair to us.” Recruitment of Minorities a Priority It took some time for the university to reach its present minority numbers. Library records indicate that immediately following the Brown vs. Board ruling in 1954, the Board of Regents voted to accept qualified in-state students to all campuses and all departments without regard to race. Two years later, the policy extended to out-of-state students.
By the 1970s, when minority numbers were first recorded, 3.4 percent of full-time students at the university were blacks -- compared to 17.8 percent of Maryland residents, the Maryland Department of Planning reported. Blacks now account for 10.7 percent of the total student population at College Park, and other minority groups account for another 17 percent. Census 2000 figures show that minorities account for nearly 37 percent of Maryland’s population, with blacks contributing to 27.9 percent of that number. “The university seeks to recruit the largest number of students of color as humanly possible,” said Cordell Black, the university’s associate vice provost for equity and diversity. “But this does not suggest, for instance, that we are attempting to match the state population,” because not all of the minorities in the state are “interested in attending college or are eligible to come to this university.” Over the years, the College Park campus has created a number of programs to help recruit and retain its minority student population, the provost’s office said. Today, for example, undergraduate admissions representatives travel to high schools across the nation to speak to minority students and their guidance counselors about visiting the College Park campus. “We are making sure that students of color understand what it takes to move through the application process,” said Zina Evans, associate director of undergraduate admissions. “Over the years, the applicant pool has become more and more diverse,” she said. The university is retaining many of its new students, too, but not enough, Black said. Graduation Numbers for Blacks High, But Rates Trail Whites'
The degree count looks good, but College Park’s minority graduation rates aren’t as positive. Of those black freshmen who entered the university in the fall of 1997, only 56 percent had graduated within six years; nearly 44 percent of them had not received a degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, by 2003, OIRP reports. The research office does not track students after six years. By comparison, of the whites who enrolled in the fall of 1997, 74 percent had graduated within six years; 26 percent had not received a degree from the university by 2003, OIRP reports. “Either blacks aren’t smart enough to get it [a degree], or there are some institutional barriers – such as lack of mentors, lack of a culturally sensitive curriculum – keeping them” from graduating, said graduate student Poles, a D.C. native. But Maryland isn’t alone in graduation disparities. At Temple University, for example, which also scored well in the sheer number of degrees awarded to minorities, only 40.6 percent of blacks from the fall 1996 freshman class graduated within six years, compared to 51.3 percent of the white students in the same class, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Florida State University fared better, but still showed a small gap. About 61 percent of the blacks from the fall 1997 freshman class graduated within six years, said Andrew Brady, FSU’s statistical coordinator. About 64 percent of the white students from that class graduated within the same period, he said. Attacking the Retention Problem Black called the wide gap in graduation rates at Maryland certainly “unacceptable.” The university, he said, has worked to narrow the graduation gap by establishing academic support units, like the Office of Multiethnic Student Education, to provide mentoring and tutoring in challenging subjects to minority students. Financial aid, too, has been given some attention, Black said. Now more grants than loans are being made available to low-income students of color, he said, because many of those students quit school to go to work. Minority students like undergraduate Allen Yiu, 20, a junior majoring in finance and information sciences, said more minority mentors and advisors are also needed. Yiu said he found it easy to get accepted and to adjust to the university, but frustrated by "a lack of Asian-American academic advisors on campus.” But some alumni say despite the problems, they see real progress on campus. Black graduate David Taft Terry attended the university from 1987 to 1992. He applauded “institutional foundations on campus” – such as the campus’ 12 black fraternities and sororities and the Nyumburu Cultural Center, which has operated for 27 years as a center for black social, cultural and intellectual interaction. Terry, now a research historian for the Maryland State Archives, said while he was on campus “the diversity was enough where you could easily be introduced to new things, even of other cultures, which you hadn’t experienced before.” Ann Turkos, university archivist, also sees advances. “There certainly are many more opportunities for persons of all colors on this campus now than there ever have been before," she said. "And there’s a much more open campus atmosphere.”
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photo courtesy Joseph Douglas Collection, Kansas Collection, Spencer Research
Library, University of Kansas Libraries Copyright ©
2004 University
of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism |
