State Flagship Universities Do Poorly in Enrolling and Graduating Black Men, Report Says

By JANE R. PORTER
Black men are underrepresented at institutions of higher learning over all, and even more so at flagship universities in the 50 states, says a report released on Wednesday by a national research center.

The report, "Black Male Students at Public Flagship Universities in the U.S.: Status, Trends, and Implications for Policy and Practice," was written for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies' Dellums Commission.

Led by former U.S. Rep. Ronald V. Dellums, Democrat of California, the commission focuses on public policies affecting the health of young African-American men.

The paper analyzed data from the U.S. Department of Education's Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System and other sources to review the status of black men in higher education, with an emphasis on public flagship universities in each of the 50 states.

In 2000 black men represented 7.9 percent of the 18- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. population, but in 2004, they constituted just 2.8 percent of undergraduate enrollments across the 50 flagship universities.

Thirty of the universities enrolled fewer than 500 black male undergraduates that year. And at 21 of the institutions, more than one of every five black men on campus was an athlete, the report says.

The findings "confirm that higher education is a public good that benefits far too few black men in America," writes the report's author, Shaun R. Harper, an assistant professor and research associate at Pennsylvania State University's Center for the Study of Higher Education.

"Given all of the institutional rhetoric regarding access to equity, multiculturalism, and social justice," Mr. Harper said in an interview on Thursday, "I just see next to no evidence of those espoused values being enacted on behalf of black male undergraduates."

Statistics cited in the report include the following:
In 2002 the proportion of all students enrolled in colleges and universities who were African-American men was the same -- 4.3 percent -- as it was in 1976.

Gender gaps in enrollment numbers within racial groups are widest among African-American students, with women outnumbering men by 27.2 percentage points.

Over a 26-year period beginning in 1977, the proportion of degree recipients who were African-American men increased by an average of 0.2 percentage points. The greatest improvement was seen on the associate-degree level.

Of those who received associate degrees in 1977, 3.8 percent were African-American men. By 2003 the proportion had grown to 4 percent.

But the proportion of doctoral-degree recipients who were African-American men fell from 2.3 percent to 2 percent over that same time period.

More than two-thirds of African-American male students who enroll in college do not graduate within six years, the lowest college completion rate across all racial groups and for both sexes.

In 2004, 30.5 percent of all male athletes in Division I college sports were African-American.

They made up 54.6 percent of football teams and 60.8 percent of basketball teams, while only 10.4 percent of all male undergraduates were black.

In a section of the report focused on implications for policy and practice, Mr. Harper recommends using affirmative action in admissions to help increase the number of African-American men at public flagship universities.

He also advocates an increase in institutional, state, and federal financial support for college-readiness programs geared toward black male students.

Legislators should also hold universities accountable for their progress in enrolling black males, he wrote in the report.

Mr. Harper also says in the report that university admissions officials should more aggressively recruit black male students for reasons other than sports -- a goal that could be achieved, he suggests, by creating a policy that links the number of black male athletes in a particular ratio with the number of African-American male students at the institution over all.

The report urges that the National Collegiate Athletic Association share in the responsibility for racial disparities in graduation rates by, for instance, financing support programs for black male athletes and barring institutions with low graduation rates for any racial group from competing in NCAA championship tournaments.

Placing an emphasis on increasing the number of black male faculty at these flagship institutions would also help raise the number of graduating black male students, Mr. Harper suggests in the report. "That's another area of tremendous institutional negligence," he said.

Universities should furthermore set a goal for the percentage of black male students expected to graduate each year, he suggests. Institutions that fail to meet these goals should be held accountable for "creating, implementing, and documenting improvement plans," according to the report.