Do Students Deserve Diversity In Higher Education

Another major predicament that plays a large role in the amount of African Americans that do not receive a higher education is once they get to college, they do not have a typical or enjoyable experience once there. In today’s society, it is hard to imagine that there is still racism and segregation in schools and colleges today but the reality is, it still does very much exist. This is especially true when black students attend predominantly white universities. Even though most colleges promote themselves by talking about how diverse their

Over the years there has been a significant decrease in the percentage of African American male success in higher education. Not only does this effect society as a whole, but more importantly this effects the African- American community as well. The high percentage of uneducated African- American males will result in increased crime rate, shortened life span and overall hard life. However this epidemic can be stopped by looking at the contributing factors of why there is a decrease in African-American male success in higher education and how to change it. Throughout the paper I will be addressing the issues as to why there are not more black men in higher education, by looking at the contributing factors such as environmental

The U.S. Department of Education’s Digest of Education Statistics (2010) compiles data on educational trends and statistics in the United States. According to the digest, in 2009 African Americans earned about 10 percent of all bachelor degrees awarded. Furthermore, about 20 percent of African Americans currently hold a college degree. When compared to the same rates for the white non-hispanic population, African Americans are largely lagging behind. The challenges that African Americans are facing must be met by post secondary institutions if this group is going to continue on the path of economic and career prosperity. This need is discussed in the report Minorities in Higher Education:

Today, African American students are under-represented in college and universities, and the reason is the ongoing disenfranchisement of African American students. Our education system needs be more responsive and needs to pay more attention to the college preparation for these students. People of color historically have been misrepresented, exploited, silenced, and taken for granted in education research (Dillard, 2000; Stanfield, 1995), (H. Richard Milner IV, 2008).

For over a century the University of Texas (UT) has served as a leading institution educating America’s leaders, however; the lingering effects of prior discrimination haunt the campus. Due to perceptions that UT’s environment is not supportive of underrepresented minority students, the University lacks diversity within its student body. Regardless, UT continues to receive an overwhelmingly selective applicant pool. However, without student diversity UT deems it difficult to perform its mission of providing superior educational opportunities while aiding the advancement of our society.

Among the nation 's largest Division I universities, the graduation rate for black students was 44% in 2013, compared with 66% for white students (Marklein). This fact along with the article, A Letter to My Nephew, by James Baldwin from the stimulus material, sparked my interest. I began to research the general topic of African Americans in college. Baldwin wrote about the idea of white americans intentionally hindering the success of black americans. As he states that white americans did not expect african americans to aspire to excellence and made sure that african americans knew in as many ways as possible that they were worthless human beings. Researching more into this idea, I found a correlation between African American success

Students have their own best way in effectively learning the lesson. With the diversity of students, the problem is each student has a preferred learning style. It becomes undeniably one of the reasons that make it difficult to achieve the best expected outcome out of teachers’ effort. However, teachers try to incorporate various teaching techniques to make every learning opportunity become productive, meaningful, and relevant for the learners.

In 2002, the latest year for which statistics are available, there were 170,241 African Americans enrolled in degree-granting graduate schools. This was an all-time high. Blacks were 8.4 percent of the total enrollments in U.S. graduate schools

Despite numerous misconceptions, African Americans who have attended HBCUs have thrived tremendously. In fact, African American students that attend an HBCU are more likely to go on to graduate from a professional school than African American graduates from other institutional types. Brandon Busteed, an executive director who organized a survey about the matter under Gallup-Purdue University stated, “There are still noticeable challenges around completion rates and loan default rates, and this data doesn’t change that…but this data does add a whole new dimension to the conversation about the value of HBCUs. Black students are having very meaningful experiences at HBCUs, compared to black graduates from everywhere else.” (Busteed) Here we can assume what Busteed analyzed from the survey was that despite the fact that HBCUs seem to have challenges, for instance one that wasn’t mention regarding how PWIs receive a substation amount of funding as compared to HBCUs. In the face of all this the black students that do attend HBCUs are still confident and graduate quite successful. Moreover, approximately 33% of African American students receiving their PhDs

It’s common knowledge that people who have higher education are more likely to succeed, having better paying jobs. African Americans have one of lowest higher education graduation rate in the country, the NCES reported in 2009-2010 that the number of African American graduates was 164,844 compared to their Caucasian counterparts with 1,167,499. African Americans made up 10% of all graduates in 2010 (NCES 2012). Although the statistics show a huge gap between African Americans and Caucasian, African Americans are progressing and increasing

In my first memo, I focused on the core elements of my research topic, African-American males in higher education. Since our last meeting, I have taken time to reflect on your suggestions, and think about how to revamp my research questions and purpose statement. Most important, I have taken time to do self-reflection.

As a testament to the next discussion point of opportunities, especially within the realm of college admission, I have experienced firsthand the opportunities presented by affirmative action. As a low-income, first-generation college student, Virginia Tech had offered me a full scholarship based solely on merit and financial need. As a “minority” according to Virginia Tech, I had an

In order to study the need of a racially and culturally diverse college campus, the journey and battles fought must be dicussed. While there is a lack of diversity on college campuses today, they are not completely devoid of people of color. However, there was a time when college campuses were one hundred percent Caucasian. Jonathan R. Alger, Jorge Chapa and a team of researchers conducted studies on various college classrooms. They then went on to publish their findings in a book titled Does Diversity make a Difference? The purpose of their paper was to discuss the importance of diversity and reveal the effects of non-diverse campus. They begin their book by taking a look into the history of diversity in America. The start of the Civil Rights movement along with President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty took place in the mid 1960s. These events forced the country to face the reality of the people of color in America. These Americans of color did not have equal access to education, jobs, housing, or other valued resources (Alger et al. 2000). College administrators and faculty were starting to understand the necessity of a diverse campus. The realized that people of color had just as much to offer to the United States as the Caucasian majority. During that time, “many higher education faculty members and administrators were deeply concerned that abandonment of race sensitive admissions and hiring, at a time when most minority groups continue to be unrepresented in higher education, will severely limit campus diversity and would undermine the learning environment for all students.” (Alger et al. 2000). Additionally, a lot of the traditionally white colleges and universities were provoked and questioned by the concerns of their students. The universities and colleges began to notice their inability to extend the same educational

Four of the readings this week looked at at the functional area of Academic Affairs as a whole and specifically the faculty at higher educational institutions in the U.S. The final reading looked at white privilege which was a great additional reading to last weeks that focused on diversity and the changing population of higher educational students.

Despite our Department’s social justice mission and our explicit diversity, my experiences as a black-Latino male has been counter to the principles we espouse. Allow me to explain. White faculty members’ have intentionally deemphasized my academic credentials, undermined me with students, and are among those who initially characterized me based on my racial identity. To illustrate, Mr. Paul Sivak created a slide to introduce faculty during the 2016 New Student Orientation that included the degrees/credentials of each faculty member, however, all of my degrees/credentials were omitted. Mr. Sivak writes in his evaluation letter that I have spent “a tremendous amount of time in the classroom touting his own research and using the platform afforded to him by his role as a teacher to proclaim his superiority…if he is pursuing scholarly activity it is only benefiting himself.” I respectfully reject Mr. Sivak’s equivocation. First, I want to be clear that I had several conversations with Department Chair Dr. Kilolo Brodie who encouraged me to talk about myself as a means to build relationships with students. She shared with me she had her own issues with students when she joined the faculty and overcame her student issues, sometimes at the expense of the course material, by spending a great deal of effort building rapport and relationships with students by sharing her personal narrative and background and even explaining to the students why she preferred to be addressed as Dr. Brodie. While I heeded this advice the interpretation in the faculty input letters is interpreted as self-serving to promote my own agenda.