April 28, 2009
Op-Ed Submission
Plan 2008 which guided UW-Madison’s minority programs over the past decade died a quiet death sometime last summer. The campus newspaper of record, Wisconsin Week, printed no obituary. Friends and supporters of the Plan organized no memorial service. Plan 2008 seems to have disappeared with barely a trace.
Isn’t it strange that Plan 2008, so widely praised when adopted by the Board of Regents a decade ago, ended so ingloriously? Could it be that the Plan did not succeed? Surely the public deserves an answer.
A review of Plan 2008’s numerical goals is instructive. The first was to increase minority enrollment. A second, more challenging goal called for ‘eliminating the gap in first-year retention rates between minority and non-minority students. A third and still more challenging goal called for eliminating the gap in six-year graduation rates between minority and non-minority students.
The first was a hardly a goal- it was a no-brainer. Admitting a few more marginally competitive minority applicants under cover of the “holistic” admissions process easily pushed up the number of enrolled minorities.
On the second goal: the long-standing retention rate gap continued until last year when the targeted minority retention rate suddenly rose to almost equal that for non-minority students. What explains this sudden increase? Better prepared targeted freshmen minority students? Improved effectiveness of Plan 2008 programs? Or was this an unexplainable one-year blip?
On the third goal, a wide gap in six-year graduation rates persists though it unexpectedly narrowed this past years. What accounts for this sudden improvement? Was it the improved effectiveness of Plan 2008 programs? But if so, why didn’t these programs began producing better results during the earlier years of Plan 2008? Is this narrowing likely to continue?
What explains last year’s sudden changes in retention and graduation rates? What explains the slow progress toward these three goals of Plan 2008′? Who is attempting to explain what is going on with respect to minority retention and graduation rates? If last year’s gains are so important, the public deserves to know what accounts for them. Is the large diversity staff unequipped to explain these changes? Apparently so. Indeed, last fall the new Chancellor faced the immediate challenge of determining in her words “what has worked and what hasn’t worked so well.” One would think the diversity staff would have had that information ready for her on arrival.
Could it be that so little progress occurred- Plan 2008 has been described by the student newspapers as “a failure”-because of insufficient administrative oversight? Probably. On leaving Madison to join President Clinton’s cabinet, former Chancellor Donna Shalala admitted that her widely- touted Madison Plan did not work. Her successor, Chancellor David Ward escaped to Washington DC without being held accountable for the meager results of his well-publicized Madison Commitment. His successor Chancellor John Wiley conducted no evaluation of Plan 2008 even though he presided over it as provost and then chancellor. What administrator can afford to be frank about diversity programs?
Or could the problem be insufficient funding? This seems unlikely because funding for UW-Madison’s diversity programs recently has been running at slightly over $20 million dollars annually. How much more money is needed? Would additional funds produce any notable changes? And, should additional funds be allocated to diversity programs when the campus faces substantial budget cuts?
When Plan 2008 took shape a decade ago, critics told the Regents that the gaps in minority retention and graduation rates could be reduced appreciably by making one simple change. Be more selective in admitting minority applicants by making sure those admitted are academically competitive with non-minority admitted applicants. Had that been done, the targeted minority graduation rate would have risen long before its recent sudden and unexplained increase.
Which leads to a bigger question. Is it right and proper for a great research university like the UW-Madison to conduct “experiments” on minority students by subjecting them to programs whose effectiveness has not been documented? There is much talk about “best practices.” But whether and how they will work or this campus are questions that remain unanswered.
Increasing the presence of minority students at UW-Madison and UW System campuses throughout Wisconsin is a worthy goal that should be pursued. But as long as institutions continue giving heavy weight to racelethnicity in admissions decisions, as the UW-Madison has done for four decades, they appear to be burnishing their image. Rather they should be engaging in the hard work needed to expand the minority student “pipeline” from high school and then work to help academically competitive minority students achieve success by graduating from UW- Madison.