Impressive Performance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Science & Engineering Gail Heriot

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has been studying Historically Black Colleges and Universities and will probably be issuing a report in the next few months; Meanwhile I've been doing a little reading on the subject. Did you know, for example, the HBCUs produce 40% of the science and engineering degrees that go to African Americans with only 20% of the African-American students? That's pretty impressive.

Why might this be? In 1996, Rogers Elliott, A. Christopher Strenta, et al. took a look at the why African-American and Hispanic students are less likely to follow careers in science than white or Asian-American students in "The Role of Ethnicity in Choosing and Leaving Science in Highly Selective Institutions." They found that African-American and Hispanic students at elite colleges and universities are about as likely as white or Asian-American students to start off intending to major in science. But they abandon those intentions in larger numbers. The authors concluded that mismatch probably played a major role. If they're right, of course, this gives HBCUs an advantage in the education of future African-American scientists and engineers, since mismatch is not a factor at these schools (though they may have other advantages as well).

As Rogers, Strenta et al. put it:

"Why are so many talented minority students, especially blacks, abandoning their initial interests and dropping from science when they attend highly selective schools? The question has many possible answers, but we will begin with the factor we think most important, the relatively low preparation of black aspirants to science in these schools, hence their poor competitive position in what is a highly competitive course of study. As in most predominantly white institutions, and especially the more selective of them, whites and Asians were at a large comparative advantage by every science-relevant measure ..., and on the composite predictor, the Academic Index, they were at a 1.75 [standard deviation] advantage.

That it is the comparative rather than the absolute status of the qualifications is clear from two strands of evidence. First students at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have quite low average SAT scores and high school grades ... but they produce 40% of black science and engineering degrees with only 20% of total black undergraduate enrollment. For example, with SATM scores averaging 400, half the students at Xavier University are reported to be majoring in natural science; with scores somewhat higher (about 450), Howard University is the top producer of black undergraduate science and engineering degrees....

[T]hat brings us to the other strand of evidence for the competition argument. .... [Our evidence] shows how science degrees are distributed within each institution as a function of terciles of the SATM distribution .... Put concretely, a student with a SATM score of 580 who wants to be in science will be three or four times more likely to persist at institutions ... where he or she is competitive, than at institutions ... where he or she is not."

Today, of course HBCUs are open to everyone regardless of race, but for historical reasons tend to have high numbers of African American students.  I have mixed feeling about them.  But it's obvious they are fulfilling an important need here.

Comments

[Dennis Nolan]

To evaluate this statistic, doesn't one have to know something of the relative quality of the science programs at the HBCU schools? If they're comparable to or better than those at the universities where the other black science majors get their degrees, the 40% statistic is pretty impressive. If they're much weaker, on the other hand, it may not mean much at all.

[km]

And here is your argument against AA.

Students who get into a school suited to their academic qualifications succeed.

Students who get into a school that is better than the student's academic qualifications fail.

AA consists of admitting minority students into schools that are better than the students' academic qualifications.