ATLANTA
Five years after the University System of Georgia started an initiative to boost enrollment of Black males, officials are seeing results, but they also realize more needs to be done.
This past weekend, the system’s African-American Male Initiative held its inaugural Best Practices Conference at Kennesaw State University to share the ideas and solutions participating institutions have come up with to make sure more Black males are being recruited, retained and graduated from Georgia’s colleges and universities.
When University System of Georgia officials found five years ago that African-American males were outnumbered by their female counterparts nearly 2-to-1, they started AAMI to turn those disproportionate numbers around, said AAMI project director, Arlethia Perry-Johnson.
“The data is pretty disconcerting. It would be more disconcerting if we were doing nothing,” she said, citing statistics that showed one public school district in Georgia graduated from high school just 54 percent of its Black males, and that rate was the highest of Georgia’s seven largest K-12 school districts.
“That’s how broad and pervasive this issue is for this state,” said Perry-Johnson. “It’s not a flash in the pan issue. It’s pervasive throughout this state and throughout this nation.”
