Reprint from the Badger Herald, December 5, 1996UW-Madison’s failure, after more than two decades of organized effort to increase its enrollment of African Americans, continues to perplex faculty, students, administrators, and the public. Rather than continuing past policies and practices, the UW-Madison community needs to rethink, in a fundamental way, its minority recruitment goals and strategies.
The simple “arithmetic” of diversity indicates the impossibility by the year 2000 of bringing African American enrollment up to the proportion of African Americans graduating from Wisconsin high schools. Compared to White Americans and the other three racial/ethnic groups, only African Americans are seriously underrepresented and will continue to be so.
But, once attention is turned to academically qualified applicants, the underrepresentation of African Americans disappears. Instead, they may well be overrepresented rather than underrepresented, as an earlier analysis demonstrated. If that analysis is correct, it is essential to rethink our diversity policy.
What reasons are customarily given for the underrepresentation of African Americans at UW-Madison? Many are offered: an unwelcoming campus atmosphere, insufficient financial aid support, inadequate administrative coordination and teamwork, lack of a visible campus commitment to diversity, an uninformed and apathetic student body, insufficient special student services, and so on. Similar reasons are offered for their much higher dropout rates.
Overcoming these barriers so as to increase enrollment and decrease dropout rates for African Americans is a daunting task. A faculty senate committee on minority issues recently admitted it had discovered no magic solution to black enrollment-retention problems. Nor did the committee’s documentation provide much insight into the causes of these problems.
A student organization, the Civil Rights Defense Coalition, has been at the forefront in seeking to increase the enrollment and retention rates of minorities. Last spring it called for lowering admission standards and for increasing remedial and other special services for minority students. Their latter proposal has resurfaced again in its latest effort. Yet, both proposals are seriously flawed. The first would widen differences in college qualifications and undoubtedly increase the already high college dropout rate for African Americans. The second would divert some of UW-Madison’s already limited budget resources to help students whose academic qualifications are weak and to bolster remedial programs of questionable effectiveness. Sadly, the low academic achievement of blacks remains a stubborn social problem that goes beyond what UW-Madison can do as an institution. This is particularly true because the UW-Madison’s mission and expertise are in teaching the best students to their highest level of achievement. So, what can be done?
The first task is to focus attention on the difficult challenge of encouraging stronger academic achievement by African Americans in their homes, in the elementary and middle school grades, and especially in the critical years of high school. The Wisconsin State Journal’s Schools of Hope Project in Madison, as well as other groups elsewhere in the state and across the nation, are now trying to do this. Carefully designed research and experimentation by scholars and practitioners are also essential if we are to learn more about raising achievement among underperforming students. Research in education schools here and elsewhere focuses on this question.
The next and more immediate task is to counsel high school graduates, regardless of their racial/ethnic background and who do not have strong academic records, to enroll at institutions whose admission standards more nearly match their academic capabilities. These institutions include other UW System campuses as well as the numerous schools which are part of the Wisconsin Technical College System. The latter offers college preparatory courses, associate degree programs, and a variety of postsecondary vocational diplomas. For many minority students, attending a campus near home rather than UW-Madison may provide a more supportive environment, reduce attendance costs, and offer better access to part-time jobs. Students who are successful at these institutions always have the option of transferring to another institution as they take on more specialized study and more advanced coursework in their junior and senior years.
The third and most critical task is for the UW-Madison to rethink its minority recruitment goals and strategies. If we believe the interests of students should be given first priority, in lieu of focusing on the campus record in minority recruitment, then we need to engage in an open and honest discussion of the following options:
- Abolish the UW-Madison goal of proportional representation which continues to hold out false hopes to many African American high school graduates who are not academically prepared to succeed at this institution.
- Eliminate UW-Madison’s preferential admissions policy for minorities and thereby reduce the high dropout rate for minorities, especially African Americans, who fail to meet the regular admissions standard.
- Shift current funding for minority scholarships and special services to provide greater help to disadvantaged students without regard to their racial/ethnic background and thereby ensure greater equality of educational opportunity for all academically able students who face financial barriers to college attendance.
These proposals are advanced to begin a discussion that faculty, students, administrators, and the public have carefully avoided for much too long. In that discussion we must weigh the implications of continuing to espouse seemingly commendable but unrealistic goals for minority recruitment and retention. We must explore the effects of having in the past admitted many underqualified minority students who have found it difficult to profit from the kind of education the UW-Madison is best equipped to provide. We must also decide what this institution can best do if anything to expand equality of educational opportunity for disadvantaged applicants whatever their racial/ethnic background.
The great challenge facing American society and particularly the African American community is discovering how to raise the level of academic achievement of minority students at all grade levels. Only then will larger numbers of minority and particularly African American high school graduates be able to enter the UW-Madison based on their academic merit. Only then will they be able to compete on an equal basis with all other students and graduate.