An elderly African American woman once said to me, "Son, we must always worry about our freedom. If we don't, we will look up and our freedom will be gone." Reflecting on the current status of African Americans in higher education, her words remain quite appropriate.

The July 10, 1997 edition of Black Issues in Higher Education contained a report on the leading institutional producers of African American baccalaureate degree recipients ("Top 100 Degree Producers: The Meaning Behind the Numbers"). But there is additional meaning behind those numbers which should give African Americans considerable cause to worry about their freedom.

Over time -- with the Emancipation Proclamation, the acquisition of voting rights, the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on "separate but equal," and the implementation of affirmative action -- there occurred a modest easement of those forces which served to keep most African Americans living as separate and unequal American citizens. But as we prepare for the dawn of the twenty-first century, yet another sinister disenfranchising force is increasingly operative -- namely, the intellectual disenfranchisement of African Americans.

Our society has been increasingly characterized as highly scientific, technical, and information oriented. Tremendous importance is placed on graduates from the natural sciences, health sciences, engineering, computer sciences, business, and other quantitatively-based fields of study. These are also fields in which African Americans continue to be significantly under-represented.

Consider, for example, the failure to participate equally in the use of computer technology. The term "falling through the net" has been used often in reference to women, people of color, rural, and low-income people who do not have equal access to the educational and economic benefits of this emerging new technology. While wealthier public schools are rapidly making it normative to have computers available for all their students, the poorer schools suffer with either no computers or very limited access for their students. As the work world relies increasingly on computer technology and the skills related to the use of such technology -- and as computers increasingly permeate all levels of formal education -- African Americans are becoming increasingly intellectually disenfranchised.

Without significant academic intervention -- particularly related to mathematics -- African Americans will not become chemists, biochemists, physicists, mathematicians, physicians, pharmacists, nurses, accountants, engineers, computer scientists, public health scientists, dentists, and information scientists. They also will not be able to do advanced work in social science fields that require considerable psychometric training -- such as political science, psychology, and sociology.

It is essential that African Americans make sure that the majority of [Black] students are not graduating in fields with low societal demand, with cumulative GPAs that are significantly lower than those for the institution as a whole, or at slower rates than the institutional norm.

As colleges and universities address their financial exigencies, we cannot permit African American students to be "financial cannon fodder." We cannot permit increased African American student enrollment to occur juxtaposed with low retention rates, low graduation rates, low cumulative GPAs, under-representation in high-demand fields, and high educational debt. Such allowances render these graduates competitively disadvantaged.

Now is the time to explore further the meaning behind the numbers of African American college graduates. We need to compare African American students with other students and find out if [Black] college graduates have the same or higher graduation and retention rates, cumulative GPAs, graduate and professional school participation rates, work opportunities, representation in high-demand fields of study, and other educational outcomes.

The true meaning behind the numbers has to do with whether the leading institutional producers of African American baccalaureate degree recipients are quantitatively and qualitatively "making good" on higher education as an individual and collective freedom strategy or whether we are simply involved in a rather sophisticated numbers game? The real meaning behind the numbers is related to whether or not higher education is providing "open doors" or merely "revolving doors" for African American students.

Dr. Jack L. Daniel Vice Provost of Academic Affairs, University of Pittsburgh