THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 6, 1996 TAG: 9611060357
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 143 lines
For black students, Hampton University and the University of Virginia may be the best colleges of their types in the nation for earning a diploma.
Hampton has the highest graduation rate among large historically black colleges, and U.Va. has the top rate for black students at flagship state schools, says the autumn issue of the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.
The journal survey is based on an NCAA report, released over the summer, of graduation rates at 305 Division I colleges. The numbers include both athletes and non-athletes.
Hampton's six-year graduation rate is 53 percent, tops among more than 15 historically black schools in the division. Second is Howard University in Washington, at 47 percent.
Norfolk State University is not included because it is not in Division I. The most recent state report lists NSU's six-year graduation rate at 18 percent, the lowest among Virginia's state-supported four-year schools.
U.Va.'s graduation rate for blacks is 84 percent, substantially more than that of any other flagship state college, the NCAA numbers say. The next highest were the University of Michigan's 67 percent and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's 64 percent.
The six-year graduation rate for whites at U.Va. is 93 percent.
Two other local schools - Old Dominion University and the College of William and Mary - are in Division I. In the NCAA's report, ODU's rates were 40 percent for blacks and 47 percent for whites; William and Mary's were 77 percent for blacks and 92 percent for whites.
Graduation rates have come under greater scrutiny recently as politicians and parents scramble to better assess the quality of colleges. But the NCAA report resurrects nagging questions about such numbers: Do they accurately reflect the quality of education at schools? And why does the gap between blacks and whites remain so wide?
At all Division I schools, the average graduation rate for whites is 59 percent, 22 percentage points more than the 37 percent average for African Americans.
Educators have offered several reasons for the racial differential. Many are linked to family income.
Because blacks are more likely to come from low-income homes, they say, the students are less likely to come into early contact with anything from computers to museums. ``They may not have some of the exposures that the average kid who lives in an upper-middle-class home takes for granted, like traveling abroad,'' said Elnora Daniel, executive vice president at Hampton.
They also are more likely to attend impoverished public schools, where academic offerings may be limited and teacher expectations of children low, the educators say. Two NSU officials, during a recent board meeting, accused high school counselors in general of not working hard enough to encourage students to take college-prep classes - a contention that local schools vigorously deny.
Norfolk State administrators have said income plays another role in depressing the graduation rates of blacks: They find it harder to cover tuition in college and may have to drop out or take several semesters off to work.
But M. Rick Turner, the dean of African-American affairs at U.Va., says that colleges can surmount many of these obstacles if they work hard enough. ``Institutional commitment is by far the most important factor in keeping African-American students,'' he said.
Of course, high admission standards help. And that's the biggest peeve that nonselective schools voice about graduation rates: Exclusive colleges, such as U.Va. and the Ivy League schools, will admit only the most capable students. So - the argument goes - their graduation rates will naturally be highest, no matter how well they teach those students.
Robert L. Belle Jr., associate director of the State Council of Higher Education, said the admission standards at U.Va. and Hampton - which is more selective than most black colleges - definitely influence their graduation rates.
``These institutions are prestigious,'' he said. ``They are going to be attracting academically prepared students, so it doesn't take much to conclude that if they're working with better-prepared students, they're going to have better graduation rates.''
Not necessarily, say Turner and Daniel. ``A university may take good students, like Stanford and Yale and Harvard, but that doesn't mean good students are going to come out,'' Turner said. ``Something has to happen within the confines of the environment to make students want to come back.''
At Hampton, students are highly motivated partly because many are second- and third-generation Hampton students, said Jamila Jenkins, a junior from Brooklyn, N.Y. ``Naturally, they are going to want to succeed; they want it to be a family tradition.''
But she said professors also play an important role in encouraging the students. ``There is a general feeling that we want ours to succeed and we push it,'' she said.
Daniel, the executive vice president, said faculty members are encouraged to work with students outside class - lecturing in dorms, working with fraternities and sororities. ``We try to have the cultural and intellectual environment permeate the totality of student life at Hampton,'' she said.
Though Hampton encourages faculty research, ``we have a real strong emphasis on teaching,'' she said. ``All of the classes are basically taught by our professors,'' not graduate students.
There are also writing and communication labs, and an assessment center that works intensively with freshmen having academic problems, Daniel said.
Turner said one of U.Va.'s keys to success was simply attracting a ``critical mass'' of African-American students. About 11 percent of undergraduates are black.
``People have to see other people who look like them inside and outside the classroom,'' he said. ``If they have to wait a week before they see somebody of color, they're going to experience a lot of alienation and loneliness.''
He said the university works hard to make black students feel comfortable from the moment they're accepted. They get four letters from his office, three of them from current U.Va. students, before classes start. Summer picnics for incoming freshmen are held in Hampton Roads, Washington and other regions.
After they get to school, freshmen are assigned a peer adviser who contacts them at least twice a week during their first year at school. Turner's office even sends them birthday cards that year. In subsequent years, they are paired with a faculty mentor in their field of interest.
Those strategies are crucial, said Reginald Wilson, senior scholar at the American Council on Education in Washington. ``Most institutions stop at the point of recruitment; after that, it's sink or swim,'' he said. ``When the extra effort is made for students - peer tutoring, high expectations, an early warning system - graduation rates will rise.''
Yet mentoring and achieving ``critical mass'' themselves may not guarantee sterling graduation rates. Even the top historically black colleges - which pride themselves on providing plenty of nurturing - have substantially lower graduation numbers than schools such as U.Va.
Black colleges say that's mostly because of their longstanding tradition of giving a second chance to underachieving black students. ``It is the historical mission of Hampton University to provide an education to those students who have potential but perhaps because of educational or financial circumstances are not high achievers,'' Daniel said. Hampton sets aside 5 percent of its spots each year for students who don't meet the school's 900 minimum SAT score.
Black schools are also finding it harder to attract cream-of-the-crop students because of ever-more-aggressive recruitment blitzes by integrated colleges, Wilson said. Historically black colleges ``are getting lower-quality students and therefore they have much more to catch up with.''
The average SAT score of Hampton freshmen, Daniel said, is about 950 - less than U.Va.'s average of 1036 for black freshmen.
Belle, of the state council, said about graduation rates: ``I don't know whether one would want to make a decision to attend or not to attend a school just looking at that one factor alone. It has to be taken in concert with other factors - the faculty-student ratio, the advising support, the atmosphere on campus.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic by The Virginian-Pilot
Graduation Rates For Black Students
Percentage of Blacks studnets who graduated within six years.
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KEYWORDS: GRADUATION RATE COLLEGES UNIVERSITY BLACK
GRADUATES by CNB