Data Shows Black Institutions Are More Likely to Produce African American Scientists
WASHINGTON
Every time the public funding of historically Black
colleges and universities (HBCUs) is discussed, the same question
arises: Now that colleges and universities are no longer segregated,
why should a separate system of colleges and universities, begun in the
time of segregation, be maintained?
This issue is being addressed in litigation, most notably in Georgia, Alabama and in Mississippi's Supreme Court case, Ayers v. Fordice. It will undergird some of the Higher Education Act reauthorization discussions in Congress and debates in state legislatures from Maryland to Louisiana.
This year as HBCU presidents face their funders, they will have some powerful new evidence to bolster their position that their institutions perform a mission that no one else does. The Educational Testing Service (ETS) is about to issue a study that says that HBCUs do a better job than traditionally White institutions in several areas - most notably in steering African American students into the fields of engineering and the hard sciences, and in shepherding them into and preparing them for post-baccalaureate study.
These are claims that HBCU leaders have been making for years, but there has been little quantitative data to back them up. The ETS study, by Dr. Harold Wenglinsky of the Policy Information Center of the Educational Testing Service, goes part of the way toward providing that validation.
Wenglinsky said in an interview that although none of his findings will be surprising to educators who are familiar with historically Black institutions, "A lot of people not familiar with HBCUs will be surprised at the effect they have in preparing the pipeline for graduate study."
Wenglinsky examined three sources of data in drawing his conclusions:
* The National Postsecondary Student Aid Study of 1990 in which the Department of Education collected information on about 72,000 students attending postsecondary institutions. The study included a wide variety of financial information as well as educational and social experience. Wenglinsky extracted information on both Black and White students who were attending HBCUs and a comparable sample of students attending traditionally white institutions (TWIs).
