Fortifying The Federal Presence in Retention

With New Legislation on the Table, Observers are Anxiously Watching to See if Federal Backing Can Help Higher Education Retain its Most Vulnerable Students

By Charles Dervarics and Ronald Roach

WASHINGTON — By and large, the statistics are downright depressing. A look at data from Black Issues' annual Top 100 degree producers list shows that the traditionally White institutions ranked one through five in conferring bachelor's degrees on Black students only graduated  — on average — a mere 18 percent of those students within six years.
And contrary to popular belief,retention is a chronic problem at historically Black colleges as well.
Meanwhile, the American Council on Education recently reported that the college-going rate of minority students had risen 3.7 percent between 1996 and 1997.
So where's the disconnect? Why do more African American students have access to colleges, but not the degrees they confer?

Students in the college pipeline face many potential roadblocks, including tougher high school graduation requirements, standardized tests and lack of money.
But once they reach college, says Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., young scholars encounter perhaps the most daunting obstacle of all: an unfamiliar, and potentially costly, atmosphere ripe for failure.
"There's an unfortunate gap in services once students reach college," says Fattah, who, along with Congressional Black Caucus leaders and the Clinton administration, has crafted a possible solution — earmarking federal funds for college retention programs.
"We have programs that help increase the pipeline of people going to college," Fattah says. "Now we want to help them become college graduates."
Fattah, a Philadelphia-based congressman, introduced a college retention proposal last fall, which has morphed into a $35 million program that is now part of the Clinton administration's fiscal 2001 budget proposal.
While critics remain skeptical about the legislation's limited scope, many higher education experts laud any federal effort to bring the issue — and some federal dollars to back it up — to the forefront.
But the possibility that the legislation will actually deliver checks to student service mailboxes in autumn 2001 may hinge on who takes control of the White House and Congress this election year.
Amid all this uncertainty, one thing is clear: National retention rates, especially among minority students, are dismal to say the least. If federal power can sway the higher education community and the officials who fund it to think of retention as an issue of access rather than an afterthought, then perhaps the legislation might portend a national movement to better serve higher education's most fragile students.