Monday, March 8, 2010

Overestimating a Black Presence Pt. 2

For the Overestimating a Black Presence post, a commenter asked about percentages of other local and comparable universities. I do not have my list of SIUE's designated comparable universities on me. But I'll get it soon.

For now, I can give the percentages of African Americans at other local universities. The numbers I am presenting come from The Education Trust; 2007 is the most recent year that they have stats from universities.

In 2007:
9.1% African American out of 10,960 undergraduates at SIUE.

7% African American out of 10,383 undergraduates at St. Louis University (SLU).

16.9% African American out of 16,294 undergraduates at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC).

13.8% African American out of 12,459 undergraduates at University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL).

8.9% African American out of 7,386 undergraduates at Washington University.

6.1% African American out of 21,484 undergraduates at University of Missouri-Columbia.

6.8% African American out of 31,472 undergraduates at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

11.2% African American out of 3,888 undergraduates at Webster University.

7.6% African American out of 10,592 undergraduates at Eastern Illinois.

11.8% African American out of 6,068 undergraduates at Lindenwood University.

88.8% African American out of 1,868 undergraduates at Harris-Stowe University.

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In a previous post, I mentioned the graduation gap. Well, of the five schools listed, only Washington University, SLU, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and University of Missouri-Columbia have a 6-year graduation rate for African Americans above 50%.

This coming summer, a group of us associated with black studies are going to try to look at the issues behind some of these numbers a little closer. If you have thoughts on causes, trends, methods of improving the graduation rate, or ideas about suggested readings on the topic, please let us know. We're interested in learning more.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting. I wonder why the SIUC attendance percentage is "high." For me, I wouldn't call Carbondale a mecca of multiculturalism...but maybe I'm missing something in Carbondale. Also, when I consider the graduation gap question re. Wash U, SLU and U of I, my first reaction to those schools is that they're more academically serious...again, this being my impression...and maybe more serious students are possibly attending these universities and that is why their graduation rates are better? Or, perhaps, based again on my impression, these three insitutions have higher tuition...is the graduation rate higher because of a class/money issue? Whereas, my impression of Carbondale is that it's more of a party/sports oriented school...but, again, that's just my impression whether right or wrong. Just some quick first impressions of the figures you presented...again, it's interesting to consider the whys.

H. Rambsy said...

Yes, those schools that have the higher graduation rates tend to attract black students from higher economic backgrounds, a group that on average does better with regards to graduation rates. The black students at Harvard and Yale, for example, graduate at almost the same rates as white students at those schools.

And yep, the schools with better results on black graduation rates are far more expensive as well. More elite. Harder to get in.