cc >> Clifton Conrad: Welcome to
this morning's session. It's a pleasure to be with you
all in this magnificent new building, including this one
among many sanctuaries. It's a pleasure to be here in
every sense. I will begin by introducing our
speaker, Dr. James Minor, who, as I think many of you know, is
being presented with the Alumni Achievement Award from the
School of Education here at the University of Wisconsin.
He will speak for about 25 to 30 minutes, as I understand it, at
which point I will introduce the two panelists immediately to
my right who will make some comments.
Then we'll have an open discussion of the topic as well
as Dr. Minor's remarks. So let me begin, if I could,
with a brief introduction, somewhat formal but also
informal as well. The University of
Wisconsin-Madison is a great public university.
And I think from my perspective it stands upon two pillars
in particular. One of those is that faculty,
students, everyone, is passionately engaged in the
pursuit of promising ideas. That's what fuels us each and
every day, not simply acquiring knowledge but pursuing ideas in
a meaningful sense. And the other pillar for me, and
I know many, many others as well, is that great
universities, faculty, staff, students, everyone, is committed
to making a difference in the world.
If I can think of anybody who embodies those two pillars, it's
the gentleman standing to my immediate left, Dr. James Minor.
He reminds me of why many of us have chosen to spend our lives
in a public university and a great public university
like this one. It's a great pleasure and honor,
really, for me to introduce someone who graduated only nine
years ago but has moved on so quickly and already made such a
difference in the world. Let me add a few more formal
comments, if I might, following the instructions given me
as to what I might say about James Minor.
He got his PhD, as I indicated, in 2001 in the Department of
Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis.
He is now the Senior Program Officer for the last couple of
months and director of the higher education programs at the
Southern Education Board, which you may or may not know,
he'll probably say a bit more about it.
It's now been around for almost 140 years, roughly.
It's had a major impact. He's clearly one of the major
up and coming, in the most meaningful sense, scholars in
the field of higher education. His work for the last nine years
now has focused on institutional governance and decision making,
in general, in particular in minority-serving institutions
including HBCUs or historically black colleges and universities.
And particularly their role in providing, advancing equal
educational opportunity for students.
He's currently engaged in and just beginning a three-year
project, a funded study, looking at the capacity of HBCUs, and
Hispanic-serving institutions as well, a project aimed at
informing federal and state policymaking across the country.
His research productivity is really very exceptional.
He got tenure at Michigan State last year.
What's most important about his work is not just the volume of
productivity, it's the quality of the work.
I refer, in particular, to a piece he wrote a couple of years
ago in the American Educational Research Journal called
Segregation Residual which was in every sense an exemplary
piece. And I think that's the kind of
work that those of us who work at a university like this are
proud of most of all. He has long been involved in
educational reform. I won't say a lot more about
that now because that's clearly what he's doing and will do for
many years to come. I think one of his colleagues
provided us with these comments and I take the liberty of
repeating them: "What impresses me most is I believe that James
is motivated by a true sense of purpose.
His commitment to improve the lives of people through the
transformative power of higher education is what distinguishes
James Minor from so many others in the higher learning."
I'm not only pleased but delighted and honored
to present, on behalf of all of us,
to Dr. James Minor the School of Education
Alumni Achievement Award. Dr. Minor.
[APPLAUSE]
James Minor: Wow, thank you, Clif.
And thank all of you for being here this morning.
I had no idea what he would say. So when they told me Clif would
be introducing me, I sort of held my breath.
If you all know Clif like I know Clif...
[LAUGHTER] The fact that he was able to
stick to the script somewhat surprises me.
[LAUGHTER] But I'm very grateful.
You can tell by the bow tie, right?
I'm very happy to be here this morning.
I'm very honored and in many ways I'm humbled to be here and
to be here to receive this award.
This is a very special place. Many people have commented as
such over the last couple of days.
But it's also a very special space for me.
In about six months this coming May will mark my 10-year
anniversary since receiving my doctor agree from this School of
Education. Until this day, I've been a part
of many other higher education organizations and institutions,
to this day when people ask me about my experience at all of
these places, I am very quick to tell them that the University of
Wisconsin-Madison was the richest intellectual community
that I've ever been a part of. And I'm very proud to say that.
So I thank you for welcoming me back so warmly.
Being back here makes me, it forces me to remember my
educational journey that led me here.
I can remember after completing a master's degree in sociology
at the university of Nebraska I returned home to Detroit, but
the master's thesis that I completed involved me working
with a national data set on quality of life indicators.
And so if you all know sociologists like I do, it's
this huge national data set and one of the things that quickly
came to me was the correlation between the level of education
in almost every indicator or quality of life
in this data set. So while conducting research
I was able to manipulate this national data set to show this
correlation. Invariably, but not surprising,
the people who had more education were more likely to
score higher on these quality of life indicators.
So they tended to be more optimistic about life.
They had health insurance. They were more optimistic about
their children's future. They lived longer.
They voted. They volunteered.
They were less likely to get divorced.
The list went on and on and on, you can imagine.
More disturbing for me, however, was the disparity for people of
color in this data set in this sample, again not surprising but
a moment of intellectual clarity for me nonetheless.
African Americans and Latinos were disproportionately low on
all of these quality of life indicators, and they were less
likely to earn a college degree. So with this new level of
awareness, I earned a master's degree, I returned home to
Detroit, I was working in the community center and I had the
opportunity to see firsthand, research and practice, the
effects on the lives of individuals, the effects on
children, the effects on family, the effects of being uneducated
or undereducated on communities. So before I even had the
opportunity to pursue a degree, I had somehow morphed into an
educator. So I'd gone from sociologist to
educator probably without even knowing it.
Now, remember this is the summer after graduating with a master's
degree, I returned home to Detroit and in that moment,
without any plan, only motivation, I packed up
my Ford Mustang, I had a hatchback at the time,
and drove without any plan whatsoever, only motivation.
I drove about 45 miles west of Detroit.
There's a university there. [LAUGHTER]
And I found my way to the School of Education.
I walked in the building with no appointment, hadn't sent an
email, no postcard, no nothing. Walked in and I said I need to
see Dean Cecil Miskel, and to my surprise he saw me
for about 30 minutes. And I went on to talk to him
about my plan and my goals to save the world via the virtues
of education. And after listening to me for
about 20 minutes he said to me, young man this is all very
impressive but based on what you're telling me I think your
talents and your ability and your interests may be better
suited for the program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Now, at the time I don't know if he was just trying
to get rid of me... [LAUGHTER]
Or if he was being sincere, but for me it didn't matter.
So I packed up my stuff, I went back home to Detroit and the
very next week I packed up my Ford Mustang hatchback
once again and set out for Madison, Wisconsin.
No appointment, no phone call, no email, no telegram.
I was just going. I found my way to Bascom Mall to
the School of Education, walked in the front door here and said
I need to see Dean Charles Read. I didn't know they called him
Chuck at the time. And his assistant, who was very
nice at the time, greeted me. She said, is he expecting you?
I said, no. She said, well Dean Read is on
vacation, and he's not expected to be back for another two
weeks, what's the nature of your visit?
So I laid it on her. [LAUGHTER]
I was indiscriminate. I went on about my story and
what I had to accomplish and achieve and why I needed to be a
part of the program here. She said, well the Associate
Dean, Michael Subkoviak, is here, let me see if he'll see
you. He agreed.
I talked to Michael, laid it on him.
And he said to me, I'm going to place a phone call for you to
the coordinator of the doctoral program, George Kliminski.
And if you all know George like I do, you can imagine that that
was the beginning of my educational journey here at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. So a true story,
but an interesting story. And for me I tell you all that,
not for the entertainment value, but because in a lot of ways my
personal educational journey informs my work and in many ways
even my presentation here today. There's a certain irony,
if you will, in educational opportunity.
You all have heard this before. The inner-city kid who overcomes
the ghetto and social odds to go on to have a successful life,
right? You all heard the story of the
three doctors, the three teenagers in Newark, New Jersey,
who make a pact in high school to stay and to graduate high
school and stay in college and become doctors.
Or even the kid from the east side of Detroit, a product of
the Detroit public school system, who goes on to become a
professor at a university that didn't accept him as a high
school applicant. All of these stories sort of
influence my work a great deal, and so what I want to share with
you today for a short while, as Clif has instructed me,
how I think these things come together.
There are a few things I want to combine my experience and my
training. All of these have led me to a
single premise that informs my work.
Now I've tested this out, it's a working premise maybe I should
say, but here it is, it's that going to college is the single
most transformative thing that can happen to a young person.
I'm testing it out but I've stuck to it pretty much.
Going to college is the single most transformative thing that
can happen to a young person. And I've been known to ruffle
the feathers of my K-12 colleagues in a very cooperative
way by commenting that in today's world graduating from
high school doesn't change your life, graduating from college
does. Now, I don't say that to ruffle
their feathers intentionally, but really I do it in a way to
push them to suggest that to prepare students to graduate
from high school only or to pass a high-stake exam, an exit exam
for high school is not enough and that the job is really to
prepare high school students with the social capital
and technical ability to enter college.
That's what really matters and that should be the work of high
schools across the country. So if, in fact, college
education is important as I'm claiming it to be for social and
economic mobility, then we must be concerned with who goes,
who doesn't go and what the landscape is in terms of
enrollment and graduation. Who's participating in higher
education and what are the social consequences of such.
So for years, educators and policymakers have debated the
merits of educational access and equity, the methods by which it
is accomplished and the effects of particular policies on our
social equilibrium. You all have heard this, right?
Proponents of improving access and equity to higher education
argue for policies and practices that would alleviate the
disparities we currently experience in college enrollment
and graduation between whites and ethnic minorities
because it's the socially just thing to do.
Social justice, in many ways, has been the impetus for
diversity, affirmative action, inclusion, ethnic studies,
race-based admissions, chief diversities officers, keep your
seat Damon, Plan 2008, you all have heard of that, campus
climate studies and a host of other practices aimed at
improving the representation or under-representation and
inclusion of minorities on college campuses.
And in some ways these have been remedial practices for decades
of discriminatory policies because, after all,
it's socially just and it's the right thing to do.
Since affirmative action and the diversity movement began, we
might all agree that the nation is very different, economically,
socially and demographically. Right now in the south, I live
in Atlanta, the southern region of the United States right now
minority students constitute the majority of enrollment
in public K-12 systems. Right now, today, they're in
public schools, we can count them, we know that they're there
and we've all heard about the projections about the change in
demographics the nation is expected to experience.
Still, the fastest growing populations in our nation are
the least likely to earn a college degree.
Two fastest growing populations in the nation are the least
likely to earn a college degree. So here's where I touch down
concerning my talk today. If the fastest growing
populations in the country are least likely to earn a college
degree and at the same time the nation has sort of
philosophically changed concerning race and race
relations and the nation economy now requires a more educated
workforce, you all see the challenge here.
So conversations about disparities and college
enrollment, in my view, have shifted in the last several
years away from social justice to what is economically
necessary. So college enrollment and gains
in the disparities are now tied more than they ever have been to
the economic well-being of the nation.
So the conversations have moved from morally correct
to social just, to what are the levels
of educational attainment to sustain our nation's economy.
So you all have heard this sort of brewing educational storm,
if you will. If you listen, like I do, you've
heard, according to the OCED which is this organization that
accounts for the percentage of educated Americans or educated
citizens across many nations, the US now lags behind somewhere
between nine and a dozen other developed nations in the
percentage of college educated citizens.
You all hear that now college is unaffordable and tuition has
risen faster than household incomes and any other indicator.
Too many students who start college don't finish and
particularly those from low income families.
So we all know that we've got this sort of rub, the need to
drastically increase the number of degrees that we produce.
We know that there are disparities in our system from
pre-K through higher education and then our workforce needs
dictate that we need to do something relatively swiftly.
All of our workforce analysis data will show us this.
A recent report claims that America will need 22 million
new degree holders in just the next eight years.
22 million new degrees in just the next eight years.
The nation will also have vacancies for at least
4.7 million new workers with a post-secondary credential.
And you all can see from the workforce trends here the change
in demographics of working aged individuals in this country.
And, again, these challenges have shifted conversations about
college access from debates about social justice to the
importance of college educated citizenry.
The percentage of Americans with a college degree has been
inextricably linked to our economy.
Some have even linked it to democracy and national security.
As a result, the federal government and the nation's
largest education foundations, policy analysts, workforce
analysts, have all responded by establishing what is commonly
known as the big goal. President Obama administration
has vowed to make the U.S. number one among developed
nations in terms of the percentage of educated citizens
we have. The philanthropic community has
endeavored to increase the percentage of Americans with a
post-secondary credential from the current rate of 39%
to 60% by 2025. This will require
nearly 40 million new degrees. In what seems to me
a very short time horizon. Now, this is the goal that has
been set. I think there's a lot of
interest in the goal and who could argue.
It's like No Child Left Behind. Who can argue about leaving a
child behind? It's the how.
So nobody's in conflict or disagreement about the goal,
it's how do we get there. And especially if you keep in
mind that the population of individuals who we need to
include are the least likely to be included as we currently
stand. One thing is for sure about this
it's virtually impossible, numerically it's impossible
to reach these goals without dramatically increasing the
enrollment and degree attainment among minorities in this
country. It's impossible.
With that in mind, if you look at the current educational
attainment, here becomes the challenge.
Now, the easiest way to interpret this slide is if you
think about a hundred 9th graders who enter high school,
what you have is sort of very round percentages of the number
of individuals who will graduate and then the percentage who will
enter college immediately following high school and then
the percentage by ethnicity of those who will graduate within
six years. And in the community college
system it's within three years. So you can see if you start with
a hundred 9th graders who are white, black and Latino what the
pipeline issues are as they move throughout the system.
Now, here's a different way of looking at these data.
Now obviously people who don't go to college right out of high
school, people who don't graduate in six years eventually
do, but if you look at the working age population in the
country, individuals who are between 25 and 64, and you can
debate that age range, but most of the data sets we use sort of
use this range, here's what the percentages look like.
And you know they're in exact conflict with what our workforce
data say. Okay?
So if you look at these percentages, you see where we
need to go in terms of accomplishing the nation's
big goal. One of the things I want to talk
about today and one of the things I've been interested in
is the role of minority serving institutions as degree
providers. And Clif mentioned very briefly
in the introduction is my interest in enhancing the
capacity of minority serving institutions.
Now, you think that traditionally we've thought
about historically black colleges and universities.
More recently we've talked about Hispanic serving institutions
and tribal colleges as a part of this mix.
Now, for the of sake of our talk today or my talk today, I want
to stick with the HBCU conversation.
We are moving quite aggressively to get our arms around the HSI
community because the designation is based upon the
percentage of enrollment not the mission of the institution.
So it's a very different concept.
The Higher Education Act of 1965 is amended to find HBCUs
or historically black colleges or universities
established prior to 1964 whose principal mission was and
is to educate black Americans. Many of you know that HBCUs were
established at the turn of the century to provide
educational opportunities, higher education opportunities,
to African Americans who could not attend, at that time,
the University of Mississippi, the University of Alabama,
the University of Georgia, Michigan State University
and many others across the country.
Little known facts, HBCUs, there are about 103, represent about
three percent of all post-secondary institutions.
But they graduate roughly 25% of African American baccalaureates.
75% of African Americans who have a PhD were undergraduates
at HBCUs. 50% of African American MDs were
undergraduates at HBCUs. So a relatively small collection
of institutions have made a tremendous contribution in the
production of African American baccalaureates and professional
degrees. So the question for me became
how do we enhance, if we're going to reach the big goal, how
do we enhance the institutions who are most dedicated to
serving the population of students that we need to make
advances in terms of degree productivity.
Now, here's where I want you to pay attention because the policy
questions that I'm going to force is about public investment
in higher education relative to the goals.
And I would make the case that we have a high degree of what
I'm calling policy incongruence. In other words, we've got
rhetoric but none of the higher education policies that we
enforce actually sort of line up with our goals as stated.
Now, about 85% of students who were in post-secondary systems
are in public colleges and universities.
Now we can argue and debate about public investment and
higher education or declining financial support or what the
federal government role is but for now we're just going to take
a picture. I'm going to give you a snapshot
of two states. Now, the reason why I showed you
the graphic before, let me just go back one time, is that the
majority of HBCUs are located in the south, you all heard me
mention, but the south still has the highest concentration of
African Americans, the highest rates of poverty and the lowest
levels of educational attainment and quality.
So I want to just highlight for you two states in terms of our
investment and the public policy.
So without getting into, where's Jay Stampen?
In the back here I saw him. So without getting into public
policy and higher education finance and funding formulas, I
just want to show you in two states, Mississippi and North
Carolina, what our public investment is in higher
education relative to the students who were in these
systems. Now, Mississippi is an odd
state. It only has eight public
colleges and universities, a relatively small state.
But when you look at the numbers here you'll see the larger
investments are made where you have the least number of
minority students attending. And you'll see, and we've broken
this down in other cases in sort of the per pupil appropriation,
but if you look at where state investment is it's in large
research universities and not where the majority of students
where we're going to make up the gains in terms of accomplishing
the big goal. North Carolina, I think,
evidences this to a greater detail.
North Carolina is a very different state in the last
decade. They've had a 400% growth in the
Hispanic population. North Carolina has about 16
public colleges and universities.
Five of them are HBCUs. One of the things that interests
me here, when you look at data, enrollment data and
appropriations data in the state of North Carolina, 30 years ago
UNC Chapel Hill enrolled the same percentage of minority
students as it does today. But if you look at the state's
investment, and we can argue these later, but I just want to
show you a snapshot, if you look at the state's investment, right
now UNC Chapel Hill enrolls about 7% of black students in
their state. White students are actually
over-represented at UNC Chapel Hill and NC State.
But if you see here, the three HBCUs or four that I have listed
Winston-Salem, UNC Central, Fayetteville State University
and Elizabeth City who are enrolled in high percentages of
minority students and recently, to a larger degree, Hispanic
students in the state are receiving, comparatively, very
small dollars in terms of the state investment.
So the question becomes what makes sense in terms of public
policy and investment in public higher education if in fact
we're going to reach the big goal?
Now, let me just take one other shift.
F. King Alexander, for those of you who heard his talk
yesterday, made some provocative comments about the for-profit
sector. And I think the arguments are
valid. But I want to evidence something
here relative to African American degree attainment.
Now, this is what it looks like in the public sphere.
If you look at African American degree providers and who's
producing African American baccalaureates, two years ago
the big story in the HBCU community is that the University
of Phoenix had surpassed Florida A&M as the number one producer
of African American baccalaureates.
Now, one of the things I will also, you can't ignore the
gender disparities that you see on the board here.
So we've got some institutions, now those of you who can't
follow my color coding, there's not a key on the side, the
institutions that are in yellow represent for-profit
institutions. Whatever this blue is on your
screen represents historically black colleges and universities.
And the gray are more traditional institutions like
Georgia State or traditionally white institutions.
I'm not sure that's true about Georgia State these days but
Florida State University and the University of Memphis.
Now, these are the top 10 undergraduate producers for
African Americans. Now, for those of you, I hear
the sighs in the room, maybe those are of being dismayed or
surprised, I'm not sure what it is, but I can forewarn you,
perhaps, that it gets worse for the production of master's
degrees. Let me show you what I mean.
The University of Phoenix, and what's interesting here is that
they are so far ahead of some of the other institutions it's
unbelievable. So there is something to be said
about the contribution of the for-profit sector as degree
providers. Now, certainly individuals who
are choosing to attend these institutions, this is the
difference between the two slides I showed you and the very
traditional educational trajectory students who graduate
from high school, who enroll in college right away and then
graduate within six years. What this tells me is that there
is a population of individuals of adults who are out there who
perhaps didn't go to college right out of high school and are
looking for degree opportunities but they're not packing up,
giving up their mortgages, quitting their jobs, returning
to live in a dormitory on campus.
So the question is systematically, now the big deal
here with the for-profit sector is quality.
The verdict is still out on quality.
What does this mean? The for-profit sectors, we've
heard about rates of loan default and delinquency and the
ability of students to pay back loans once they complete.
And the graduation rates. But this is a reality I think we
have to face and figure out systematically how do we
dramatically increase degree productivity and how?
One thing for sure is that the current investments that we make
right now and public higher education won't get us there.
Obviously, the for-profit sector is making a contribution.
There's something to be said there.
As much as I don't like it either, I can't deny this.
I just can't get around it. I can't deny it.
Something's happening here. So what I want us to talk about
today I could lecture on and on and on but I won't.
I want to stop and I want to ask the panelists a few questions as
a part of our discussion. I think this is an appropriate
place to pause. But I've sort of alluded them
that I'd be asking them a couple of questions, and I hope you all
will ask also. For Jerlando, one question might
be, what are the one or two policy decisions at the local or
federal level that might improve the number of ethnic minorities
who graduate from high school eligible to enter college?
I ask the question because I'm often overwhelmed by the
magnitude of the problem. So if I narrowed it down to one
state and one policy decision or two policy decisions, what might
they be? For Damon Williams, I'm curious
to know how do contemporary perceptions of race influence
public will to make education decisions that account for the
current racial disparities? And for Clif, who is our
resident expert on desegregation and higher education, I'm
curious to know if the US Supreme Court case around Fortis
which guides public states about investments in higher education
and what might be considered funding disparities between
black institutions or historically black institutions
and more traditional institutions, whether or not
that holds up. And whether or not that is a
suitable precedent that might alleviate the challenges we see
here with respect to the funding disparities.
I currently work for the Southern Education Foundation,
Clif alluded to that, which was established in 1867, two years
after the 13th Amendment was ratified to abolish slavery.
The foundation was started to provide educational access,
opportunity and quality to newly freed slaves in the south.
Today, as I mentioned before, the south is still the blackest
region in the country. It's still the poorest and it's
still the least educated. So I'm very thankful to the
University of Wisconsin, it's given me an opportunity, a
credential, has sanctioned me to do this work and we're very
excited about what we're doing and I'm very excited about the
opportunity of being here. Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
Let me provide some brief introductions.
Forgive my brevity, but in the interest of time--
At first, if I might, to my immediate right, I'd like
to introduce Dr. Damon Williams. We're delighted to have him
with us. Damon joined us a couple years
ago from out on the east coast. And we were able to attract him
to serve as the Chief Diversity Officer at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison where, among other things, he is vice
chancellor vice provost, and a member of our ELPA faculty
as well. We're delighted to have him
as a member of the faculty. In a bit of an understatement,
a dollar per three, Damon for the last two years has been
at the absolute epicenter of initiatives at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison to advance diversity, including, notably
among other things, diversity in terms of students and faculty,
diversity in terms of our teaching and learning in our
classrooms, diversity and difference, if you will, in
terms of leadership development and so on.
In so doing, it provides strategic leadership, he's got
something like whatever it is, $15 million or so that he's in
charge of, for various diversity initiatives on campus.
And I just want to mention a couple of them because under his
stewardship I think they've grown and prospered and are
doing very, very well, including one of the nation's largest
K-12 through college programs, the nation's only hip hop urban
arts learning community program, and the Posse program.
I think it's the largest Posse program, if you will, in the
country. He has formidable energy, as you
might be able to surmise if you didn't notice already.
He's also a scholar, takes a little time in the evenings and
weekends once in a while and he just finished a monograph on
chief diversity officers and also has a forthcoming book with
a similar title and looks at various dimensions of being a
chief diversity officer, including at major universities
like ours. So I'm delighted to introduce a
gentleman who has already made very much a difference in terms
of advancing diversity and difference or our campus.
Let me also introduce my colleague and friend.
I could go on and on about him as well, Dr. Jerlando Jackson,
who joined our faculty a number of years ago.
He's now an associate prof of higher and post-secondary
education in the Department of Educational Leadership and
Policy Analysis. He's also coordinator of the
higher education, post-secondary ed and continuing ed program in
our department. And notably, recently,
he's now heading up the-- He's director,
official title, of Wisconsin's Equity and Inclusion Laboratory
here at the university. He's been a prodigious scholar
in the years that he's been here.
He's, in a bit of understatement once again, in particular
looking at workforce diversity and we all know from a search
and otherwise the importance of a diversity workforce
in advancing diversity, including student diversity.
He's got among his many publications
some 90 publications already. He's done four or five books.
In fact, one of them just came out, a wonderful little volume,
an Introduction to American Higher Education, that I would
highly recommend and I'm not on commission let me add.
[LAUGHTER] But he's published, now,
four books in the last few years and is a very highly
valued member of our department, the School of Education and most
assuredly the University of Wisconsin.
So I'm merely the moderator, and so I'll try to help facilitate
the discussion. Gentlemen, you're invited to
respond to Dr. Minor's questions and add anything you'd like to
about the burning question that Dr. Minor has posed for us
today. [INAUDIBLE]
I'm sorry? >> Could the questions be
repeated as they go along for those of us whose...
I should think so. Gentleman, so feel free to
repeat the questions if you could.
Sure, I'll abbreviate for my response.
I've been asked to think about any types of policy decisions or
implementations that would help to, in many ways, address the
concern expressed relative to increasing the number of what I
interpreted to be people of color in general, low
socioeconomic status groups, to be able to competitively enhance
our United States workforce. And I'd like to kind of
contextualize my response and say thank you for the well
positioned argument and to frame an important discussion here
today, the work that we take here very seriously at the
School of Education. I would say that two approaches
to think about this, and they both require collective efforts
between K-12 schools and higher education.
And that's where you will be able to think about a problem
like this because oftentimes these spaces operate
independently but we depend on each other to actually supply
the work demands, opportunities, educated citizens and morals of
society. So it is a collective effort
even though we often do it independently.
That said, two spaces that sit well to approach something like
this would be, the first would be to find synergistic
opportunities where we work currently in conjunction with
one another on these types of issues.
We've had, for quite some time now, a program administered
through the Council for Opportunity in Education to deal
with these major issues. Arnold Mitchem, who we can
partly claim here, spent some time, at least two stints at the
University of Wisconsin in Madison, has led this nonprofit
in Washington, DC, for quite some time.
I'll give you a couple notes about it and then eventually it
will make sense because it's the housing umbrella for a major
set of programs that will sound clearer to you.
But the Council of Opportunity in Education was established in
1981. And its primary purpose was to
clarify, support and articulate the college preparatory
aspirations for low income, first generation students of
color as well. And it administers the TRIO
programs that we've known for quite some time have been very
effective in helping us to address these issues.
And what's wonderful about supporting this work in the TRIO
programs and even our take on the philosophy and our
implementation of the PEOPLE program is that it's a space
where both K-12 and higher education are working
collectively. And we're working collectively
because we understand that while we may point to K-12 schools as
places where the primary objective is to prepare them for
colleges, we also know at the very same time that K-12 schools
are very taxed in their current responsibilities, largely having
to rely heavily on governmental funding to carry out these
responsibilities. That said, it is in our best
interest to find ways to supplement and enhance those
efforts in ways that would allow us to maximize these
opportunities that are there. Just a couple of points about
how effective the TRIO programs have been in line of some of
what they do. They help students through the
college selection process. They help students with tutoring
on subject matter, topics that they have challenge.
They help to really articulate a transition, an individual set of
plans, activities, in ways that independently K-12 schools,
parents, social organizations might not be able to do.
But it also allows us to have formal relationships in place
that can be build very powerful long-term relationships.
The program has helped to graduate approximately two
million students from college and universities.
And that's fairly significant if you think about the timeframe
that it's worked with and the fact that the premise is based
on the argument set forth by James Minor and that is the
group that's least likely to go to college is the group that
they've vested their energy, spirits and space to reverse
that as well. And in the spirit of the
programs, for institutions that don't have these TRIO programs,
they've adopted the spirit of those and developed initiatives
very much in line with the PEOPLE program which is
unmatched. The second space I'd like to
articulate as a golden opportunity would be supportive
programs or supplemental programs and interventions.
And let me clarify what I mean by that.
Here I'm talking about working in spaces that are outside of
the formal education organizations, and that would be
after-school, high quality after-school and summer
programs. Again, this is built on the
premise that K-12 schools get taxed, there's only so much that
you can get into the school day. I spent the weekend at the
Educational Testing Services in Princeton, and this weekend they
had a forum dedicated to similarly the larger question
but they wanted to get more specific and deal with the
educational challenges of African American males
throughout the educational pipeline.
And it's built, in many ways, on the argument that James Minor
laid out for us. And at that event, there were a
set of us that came in to present research on a topic but
they also brought in highly effective practitioners running
programs. And one of the programs that was
featured that's been highly effective was an after-school
and supplemental program. And it's the Brotherhood and
Sister Sol program which has its inception at Brown University.
There were two seniors, these gentlemen were in college.
They incubated the idea at Brown in their senior year and
eventually moved it to Harlem where they've been in place for
quite some time and highly successful.
And when you hear about the program it talks about providing
supplemental programs for both their target audience being
black and Latino youth to help eliminate their surroundings
that are often connected to poverty, drugs, violence, racism
and mis-education is what they have documented.
They run their program from 3:30 to 7:30 Monday through Friday.
And in this timeframe they spend, not only efforts to
enhance in-class necessary knowledge, but also they think
through the whole person development.
But this is where it becomes key.
It requires parental involvement and engagement in significant
ways. So they have a culture of
meeting on Saturday so that the parents can be involved and
engaged, and in fact an interesting note, it's part of
the curriculum that is fueled, it comes from a student parental
survey and involvement. I probably should stop there
because I don't recall how much time we had.
[LAUGHTER] But those would be two
appropriate responses. I think we'd be mindful that
there's probably only so much we can put in the instructional
day, realizing that we still have significant ways to go and
oftentimes when groups may not have highly educated parents or
involve these supplemental initiatives out of the
classroom, paired partnerships with the parents is going to be
key dealing with this problem. >> I'm also very appreciative of
the opportunity to be here today and I appreciate the question
posed to me and I want to repeat that and as I captured it was,
how do the perceptions of race influence the public will to
make educational decisions that account for racial disparity?
So in what ways does perceptions of race influence public will to
make educational decisions that account for racial disparity?
And I want to reframe that question a little bit.
And the way I want to reframe that question just a bit is what
do you do when you face the brutal facts of your reality?
What do you do when you face the brutal facts of your reality?
And Dr. Minor did a wonderful job of presenting some of those
brutal facts, brutal facts that we see with respect of
under-representation of males versus females in terms of
African Americans. Brutal facts in terms of where
we are nationally with respect to global competition in terms
of education attainment. Brutal facts that we cannot
overcome the disparity that we see at the global level if we
don't do more to educate individuals who are
underrepresented. Brutal facts that we see in
terms of HBCUs and other mission-focused niche, strategic
institutions, dying slow deaths. Brutal fact that is we see with
respect to the ways in which higher education appropriations
are offered and the implication that we see in terms of various
educational outcomes. Brutal facts that we see also,
too, in terms of organizations, institutions like HBCUs, other
minority-serving institutions which are hyper-underfunded,
hyper-undersupported but yet still find a way to stand in the
cracks in the dam to make a difference every day at a rate
which greatly exceeds what we would expect in terms of their
productivity. Brutal facts in terms of a world
that has changed because post-secondary institutions and
where students can go have shifted in many regards and
what's the implication of that for HBCUs.
And as I think about those issues and I think about facing
those brutal facts, I come back to the question, not just at a
global level or at a scholarly level or at an intellectual
level, but I come back to at my day-to-day work here at the
University of Wisconsin Madison and it's will we act in ways
that are grounded in strategic diversity leadership or will we
act in ways that are perhaps grounded in some type of other
form of leadership? Will we make decisions that are
evidence-based? Will we make decision that is
are grounded in the data that we see?
And then will we have the courage of our convictions to do
different to do better? Those are the types of issues
that I think about, and I oftentimes find that I can be on
the same side of many of my colleagues, but I also times
find that I can be on another side with my colleagues.
Because sometimes you have to face the brutal facts of your
reality and you have to make hard decisions.
As I think about particularly the topic that was undergirding
the entirety of the discussion led by Dr. Minor around HBCUs,
several ideas come to mind for me.
And I have several presidents who are friends, colleagues and
mentors of mine, one of them being the president at Howard
University who recently released, not too long ago, a
set of recommendations with respect to how that institution
wanted to position itself going forward into the future.
A couple things I think will become incredibly important.
Number one is the ways in which these institutions will grapple
with the challenge of heritage and possibility as an
overarching idea. How will they grapple with
heritage and possibility as an overarching idea.
In what ways will they find the space to continue the things
that have historically made them great but yet, at the same time,
pivot towards the brutal facts of a reality that they face.
A couple things I think become key.
Number one will be the need for these institutions to probably
become more streamlined, as will all of post-secondary education
need to be become more streamlined, including the
University of Wisconsin at Madison.
We're facing incredible financial exigencies which are
requiring us to do business in ways more and more that will
become more strategic, more corporate-like, making hard
decisions about where we have to get streamlined and get focused.
Institutions that are facing the most dramatic financial exigent
circumstance always must be the most focused on where they are,
who they are, what they're going to do.
So some of the institutions will be forced to close, as has
happened with single gendered institutions.
Others will be forced to shift their mission and look to become
even more diverse in their student populations if they want
to expand the possibility of who they with potentially serve.
Additionally, it will be important to think about the
ways in which technology can be leveraged at these institutions
which, in particular, have great expertise and a great history of
success with educating the same students that are now being done
a criminal disservice through degree programs like Phoenix
online and other for-profit agencies.
Additionally, it will also be important that some of these
institutions will need to look toward strategic partnership.
Strategic partnership at the K-12 level in terms of charter
schools, strategic partnership in terms of corporate
reeducation programs that they can put in place, strategic
partnership in terms of two-year institutions and bridge
programs, strategic partnerships like the one that exist at --
university and also that exist at Spelman University in terms
of Georgia Tech and Florida State University, in particular,
as it relates to stem-based degree programs.
Those types of innovative solutions and clear thinking,
I think, present some of the possibilities for these
institutions. At the same time, I think that
some of these institutions will be forced to turn the lights
out. And that's unfortunate.
It's not something I think that is at all easy to swallow given
the historic and incredibly influential role that they've
played and continue to play but the current economic moment that
we find ourselves is not going to turn anytime soon and the
quicker that leaders can embrace new possibilities like the ones
that we talked a little bit about Mississippi, there were
possibilities that were under discussion about the combining
of three HBCUs into a supra-institution and really
getting more strategically clear around these things.
My final point, and I know that my time is limited, I had the
good fortune at present to be working on an evaluation project
with the Kellogg Foundation whereby my research team has
been charged to examine an effort which has been funded at
the seven figure level to transform male youth of color
education at the primary levels in four different school
districts across the country. So Lansing, Chicago, Polk county
Florida and Peoria. And one of the things that was
interesting, and it takes me back to the beginning of the
question which is how does race influence public will to do
what's required, and I'll never forget being in these focus
groups with teachers, being in focus groups with
administrators, being in focus groups with principals and
leaders at the superintendent level, being in focus groups
with parents and hearing about this very racially focused
themed grant which was focused around enhancing the educational
possibilities male youth of color.
We saw those data. But yet even faced with the
brutal facts of those realities, there was a deep resistance to
that. There was a deep resistance to
saying we must act now aggressively, intrusively,
strategically to make a difference on this.
And it was washed and it was obfuscated in a liberalism.
It was obfuscated in a well, we need to do things broadly to
serve and to meet the needs of the entirety.
And my response is yes, we do, but in the same instance too
without deep intrusive aggressive action to really
address what is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st
century which is what is increasingly happening, not just
with males of color, but with males overall that we're seeing
at primary levels then we will continue to find ourselves
continuing to go opposite to the strategic goals that have been
outlined nationally by the president and others.
Thank you. I'll just say a couple words
here.
James asked me about the Fortis case.
Let me quickly, or try to relatively quickly, address two
questions beginning not with that one, but with another one.
Why have HBCUs been so successful in advancing equal
opportunity for African American students?
If it's okay if I address that question.
I have spent I guess the last 30 years involved in the higher ed
deseg cases across the south and visited about half of the
nation's HBCUs, public HBCUs and a couple of privates in Atlanta.
It's been an ethnographic journey.
I've done studies and so on, major big studies of program
duplication and inequality but I think I've learned some things
from HBCUs about why they do so well.
And for me it has to do, from my ethnographic standpoint, with
cultures that cultivate a welcomingness and a support that
is absolutely precious. I've been outsider hanging
around these places for sometimes three, four, five days
at a time. From Prairie View for North
Carolina A&T to Kentucky State and so on.
There is, not only by the way to African American students, but
often to students of other races and ethnic backgrounds, and I
want to accent the point because I think it gets lost.
It's an ethos, a welcomingness that is absolutely precious,
particularly for a young man such as myself from North Dakota
who appreciates when people reach out and give you a genuine
hello. And I've noticed with so many
students at HBCUs that they felt that from the very beginning
instead of a fear factor it was support.
And it seems so subtle and obvious and yet it's very
different from talking about campus cultures at 75,583 feet,
if you get my drift. And it's an openness and
constant with my point about fear, instead of fear it's about
support. And I'll never forget the first
time I went to Elkhorn, since James did the Fortis case in
Mississippi, the welcomingness and support that people got
where the academic skills parlor was right in the center at
Elkhorn. It was right in the center of
campus, and people weren't embarrassed to go there.
That building was filled all day.
People cultivating some of their basic literacy skills and higher
order thinking skills, and it was a welcomingness and a
support for learning that I found to be relatively precious
in the higher learning and found it again and again in many of
the nation's HBCUs. And I think that the fact that
they've done it with relatively few resources has been quite
remarkable and severely under-appreciated, namely
cultivating an ethos and support systems that genuinely support
African American, and some white students in many cases, to go to
their institutions. So I do think it's important to
begin with that as a point of departure.
Now, you asked a question of what can be done.
These institutions are, relatively speaking, severely
underfunded. What are the ultimate ways to
address, you asked the question in terms of funding.
Well, I've spent a lot of years trying to address that question
in remedies in states like Texas and Louisiana, Alabama,
Mississippi, Louisiana and so on.
And for me, especially in a 21st century that is really an
entrepreneurial environment, it's an economic environment,
what helps is when you get graduate programs, in
particular, because they bring in funding, they do, they
enhance reputation, and at the policy level building high
demand graduate programs in fields like engineering and so
on, that's what needs to be done.
We've done remedies like that or I've seen great examples of that
where it's made quite a difference where you put in a
new engineering program at North Carolina A&T and it makes kind
of a big difference. Not only does it help to
desegregate North Carolina A&T, which is now up to I think 15%
white students, but it also creates extraordinary
opportunities for African American students.
So building on those kind of programs that we need for in the
next, as James pointed out with great clarity and so on,
building those kind of programs can make all the difference.
And a lot of HBCUs didn't even have, when we were doing these
programs we were going to an engineering program at Virginia
State, south of Richmond, Virginia, if you've ever been
there, they had an engineering tech program.
That's a land-grant school, 1892 Land Grant Act, and they did not
even have an undergraduate engineering degree.
Meanwhile, a school not to be mentioned, well I'll mention it,
Virginia Commonwealth University was led by an individual who
formally worked at the University of Wisconsin system,
came down and built a heck of an engineering school.
Well, finally we put in an engineering school at Virginia
State. Those kind of programs, graduate
programs that are going to draw lots of students and they're
going to draw resources in a 21st century in which those
programs that bring in resources, let's be candid,
engineering, business and the sciences and so on, I think
those are really critical. You asked about whether Fortis,
Fortis, I don't know if many people know, is a higher ed
equivalent of Brown. Brown didn't work in higher ed
so the government had to begin in the late 1970s with some
cases going after Tennessee, then Alabama, Mississippi and
Louisiana. And the Fortis decision in 1992,
decision by the United States Supreme Court, was that there
were still vestiges of segregation in higher education
including dual and unequal systems, if you get my drift.
And that is still being pursued in states like, which I can't
say much about, including the state of Maryland and the state
of Oklahoma. So the Fortis decision is still
on the table. It's unclear, some parties in
some of these cases are arguing that the Fortis decision in 1992
is now 18 years old and history, that remains problematic.
We'll see what happens in the courts.
But I do think that we really need to build on the history to
come full circle, this extraordinary history and ethos
of welcoming us in supporting HBCUs and begin to couple that
with building up programs, which in turn will bring the
resources. And I think HBCUs, clearly,
along with HSIs and tribal colleges are going to have an
increasingly and should have an increasingly prominent role on
the landscape of higher education because they can do
more with less and they have a history of showing that.
And so I remain somewhat optimistic about it, but we'll
see what happens. And they have certainly, to this
point, done an extraordinary job with fewer resources.
Now I think we should probably open this up to some comments
and questions that others may have.
Feel free. I think we have a mic here,
Ashley has right there. Dr. Minor or anyone else.
I recently read a report from the Lumina Foundation that said
that by 2025 if Wisconsin continues its current growth in
graduates we will only have 47% for a population actually
getting bachelor's degrees, AAs or BAs.
And I'm wondering if you have any advice for the state of
Wisconsin. >> I don't even know where to
begin. >> What's interesting, that's an
excellent question, during my time here I worked not only in
this building but up the mall a ways, and one of the
responsibilities I had was to walk down State Street to the
capitol in some version of an odd lobbying capacity.
For some reason they thought sending students was better than
sending administrators to sort of speak about the interest of
the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Here's one of the things I learned.
We ended up talking to people who were on a finance committee
who were making decisions about investments and public entities,
not just higher education. And so we go in and we talk
about why it was important to support higher education.
And you'd only get about four and a half, five minutes.
And when we left there was somebody standing there for
Child and Family Welfare, Roads and Commissions, the Criminal
Justice System, all going in to give their five minute spiel.
So what is interesting to me about state policy and support
of higher education, it's interesting to hear Damon's
comments, it really means we have to work more cooperatively
as a public system of higher education.
One of the most fascinating things I've learned, I was
spending time in a public board meeting.
So this was a particular state who had a state system much like
Wisconsin. All the presidents arrived.
The appropriation from the state goes to the system and then the
system decides how to disperse these funds.
And it occurred to me that everybody around the table was
asking for more for their particular institution without
any regard or respect to what Damon calls the brutal facts.
And so it occurred to me that unless institutions are willing
to work more cooperatively then I don't see there being many
opportunities to change the trends that we see in
educational attainment. And that's very unfortunate.
It's interesting, some people tend to be a little heavy-handed
with regard to the role of the state.
The other thing is when you walk into a legislator's office and I
say, listen this is what your state looks like
demographically, here are the educational attainment rates,
what are you going do? How can I help you here?
It's interesting, somehow that has to translate into decisions,
systematic decisions about public systems of higher
education. And unfortunately I don't think
we're there yet. Part of the problem is turnover.
New administration is elected, the seats of power change and
you almost seem as if you're starting over from scratch.
I tend to think that a lot of the work has to be done in
cooperation and collaboration with campus leaders who can
collectively go to legislators and say here's what's good for
our system. And I think that's where we have
a good chance. >> Yes?
[INAUDIBLE] >> I want to thank
you for your presentation. And Clif Conrad, thank you so
much for informing all of us and reminding those of us that know
the role in which HBCUs have played in higher education.
But yes we are being confronted with some real issues in terms
of the economics. So the question that I raise to
Dr. Minor is what is the Southern Education Foundation
and NAFEO which represents the HBCUs in terms of leadership,
what are they doing to come together to try to see how they
can develop some strategic models that would really address
really the continuation, but maybe in a different form, of
higher education for students of color, specifically African
Americans? >> Thank you.
Let me just, I appreciate the question, let me answer it this
way. You all remember the Civil
Rights Movement, right? You with me here?
It wasn't that long ago. The Civil Rights Act of 1964,
the point I want to make here is how contemporary the
desegregation argument is. It blows my mind how
contemporary this issue is. The Civil Rights Act of 1964,
Title Six of that act was a provision that disallowed state
entities to receive federal funding that had discriminatory
practices or as a policy of employment, and public colleges
in university sort of fell under Title Six of the 1964 Civil
Rights Act. What that meant is that you
could not receive federal financial aid if you had
policies that were blatantly discriminatory, right,
across race, gender, sexuality and the like.
Just about two months ago I sat next to the assistant
secretary of education. Shortly after that, the Fortis
case that Clif spoke about in 1992, this is a US Supreme Court
decision that found the state of Mississippi, in 1992, liable for
discrimination based on race. This was in 1992.
I'm sitting next to the assistant secretary of higher
education, there were six, at the time maybe 12 to 15 open
cases. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund
sued the federal government for not enforcing Title Six.
In other words, they continue to give federal funding to
institutions that clearly had discriminatory practices.
Just one example, the University of Mississippi, as a condition
of admission, requires students to have three letters of
recommendation from alumni. This is just one example.
Now, this was in, I mean these are early 1970s when Fortis
began. So 20 plus years later, almost
30 years later, the US Supreme Court finds the state of
Mississippi liable. Two months ago I'm sitting next
to the assistant secretary of education.
There are currently about six open cases around Title Six
enforcement, two of which closed right before President Obama
took office. There's six open cases
investigating practices of discrimination in terms of state
appropriations to institutions based on race.
The fact that this is a contemporary issue blows my
mind. So the question that was asked
is what is the Southern Education Foundation doing?
Part of the issue is to really, my question to Damon was
actually loaded. It bothers me that the social
justice argument I don't think is a very salient one at this
particular day and time. I think what moves legislators
to act is that if I can tie the economic condition of that their
state to their investment in public higher education, I think
that's the salient argument for them.
And so the Southern Education Foundation along with NAFEO and
the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and the UNCF have
collectively tried to make a push to states to say forget
about what's socially just or morally correct, let's talk
economics and what your state needs to do to be viable.
The students are in the K-12 system.
We can count them. We know that they're going to
graduate at some point and move into post-secondary institutions
and we know if they don't go to college they don't make certain
kinds of contributions economically and civically to
your state. So our goal is to really make
the case, on the one hand. On the other hand, we really try
to work with institutions to increase or enhance their
capacity to serve students. Quick example, 25 years ago
Morehouse College, which is perhaps to some a beacon in the
HBCU community in terms of their ability to produce African
American leaders and particularly men, 25 years ago
Morehouse College enrolled 3,000 students.
Today Morehouse College enrolls 3,000 students.
And somehow we've got to try and figure out how HBCUs in this
particular climate could expand their capacity to serve many
more students. If you look at the enrollments,
even in the public sector, especially in the private, many
of them are enrolling somewhere around 600 students, 800
students, 1200 students, Edward Waters I think in Florida is
somewhere around 650, and even the larger HBCUs, North Carolina
A&T, Florida A&M, none of them are much more than 14,000
students. So there's not a model there
that will enroll 35,000 students.
So the challenge is there. We know the students are coming.
So on the one hand we want to approach state legislators and
the powers that be who can really make strategic
investments in their public higher education system, but,
also at the same time, work to expand the capacity of HBCUs to
serve more students. >> David.
I want to ask you a question using the analogy of
accountability in K-12 systems. State test scores are
disaggregated, there are improvement targets set for
schools that are disaggregated by race, what if you use college
degree production in the same way?
And what if you said not just the number of students admitted
into the college but to reach the proportion of students of
different ethnicities in a state?
So the long-term goal for a public university would be to
achieve the proportion of students actually completing
college successfully. And then you required each
institution to create a problem-solving strategy like
you see in districts in school to accomplish it.
So it's an accountability with incentives tied to maybe Pell
Grant money or some kind of money coming in as a
requirement. Would that approach work very
well? Maybe it's already being done,
I'm sorry to not know, would that be a very powerful way to
create a process of improvement and database look at completion
rates? >> Thanks, David.
That's an interesting question. And we have some examples of
very strong accountability measures in state supported
systems of public higher education.
The one that comes to mind very quickly is the state of Colorado
which some years ago instituted what are known as performance
contracts. And what the state legislature
has said is listen public colleges and universities, we
have an appropriation here, if you take it you've got to sign a
contract to act and behave in particular ways that are good
for the state of Colorado. Now, can you leave it on the
table, you don't have to do it. But if you want the
appropriation, and they are public documents, I'm fascinated
by how specific they are. So they outline strategic goals
for each campus, for each college or university that
receives public support to serve particular populations in their
region, to offer these degrees, to produce this kind of
workforce, it's amazing. Now, some might call it very
heavy-handed. The challenge, David, is that
the governing structure looks so different from one state to the
next that most legislators don't always have that authority.
So in a state like Michigan, for example, that doesn't have an
overarching governing body, every institution is sort of
governed very autonomously. So your pitch in legislature,
the only answer you have is to make to the board.
I think it would be fantastic if we could systematically say
here's what's happening in our state and here are the ways in
which we need our public colleges to perform.
Here are the students that we need to serve, and make very
strategic decisions based on the brutal facts.
I think I like that term. Can you use that, Damon?
Well I borrowed it from Jim Collins, but I'm sure he won't
mind. >> Well we'll cite him.
But the challenge is that currently we don't have that.
And it's interesting to address the issues that we're talking
about here is really not on the top of the agenda for many
colleges and universities. It's really not.
[INAUDIBLE] >> Are we still recording?
[LAUGHTER] I think the camera is still
rolling, David, you better be careful.
I think what you see the federal government trying to do is some
version of this. Race to the top funds, the
support for the community college system, but I don't
think you're going to have the kind of traction without very
strong measures. Now here's the challenge, and
this is why my question to Damon was so loaded, what that
implies, David, is we make strategic financial investments
based on race to some degree. Because the target we're
attracting are minorities. What we have to tended to do in
this country is make investments based on merit, to a large
degree. >> Or tests.
Or tests, which is some proxy for merit.
That's to say if you work really hard and you score really high,
we'll support you whether you need the money or not.
The worst and best case example is the state of Georgia and
their Hope Scholarship. And the idea is that we're going
to award students based on merit because we want to keep the best
and brightest students in our state.
So we're awarding state funds in this case based on for students
who score really high because we don't want them to go to the
next state to go to college. But what that means is that
we're now awarding funds to students who really don't need
money to go to college. So it's an inverse and that's
why I really ask about the American conscious.
What fascinates me about this is that there is a democratic
legislative process here that there has to be some level of
public will to strategically invest in advancing degree
attainment among minority students in this country.
And that's what I'm really curious about.
I don't know if we're ready to sort of proclaim that as a
nation. I don't know if we're really
ready to divert billions of dollars to really make your
child able to compete with my child by making sure that
they've got a college education. We understand the economic
crisis and the facts but are we really ready to make federal
investments? Is it popular politically?
Is it viable politically? On the state level it's really
tricky, but what you're asking is that we're going to make
strategic investments to increase the degree productivity
and support minority students in a particular state or across the
nation. And I'm not quite sure that
there's public will for that. I hope I'm wrong.
Damon, you want to comment on that?
Oh, no, you commented very well.
[LAUGHTER] >> Maybe one last.
Maybe two questions. >> I have a question for
Mr. Williams. Mr. Conrad mentioned the support
that many HBCUs have for their students, as a student here I
was just, there is support here but it's not known to many of
the students and there's a lack of that.
And I feel like a lot of students don't benefit from
this. So what are your efforts to,
like, promote these aids of help because I know I've been here
for two years and I'm just now finding out about a lot of
stuff. What are you doing to help that?
That's a great question and I appreciate it so much.
One of the things we've done I think a tremendous job at this
university with respect to supporting and trying to enhance
outcomes for our underrepresented students is
we've built a tremendous number of student diversity kind of
learning programs. So we've built the Chancellor's
Scholars Program, the Powers/Knapp Program, the Posse
Program, the First Wave Program. We've made investments into the
AAP program. We've made investments into the
CEO program. We've done a tremendous amount
of work building all those programs and the PEOPLE program,
of course, is one of the majors as well.
But in doing that I think one of the things that we've done, and
I see our new director of admissions sitting in the room,
Ms. Adele Brumfield, we're working on some new strategies
right now because I think one of the things that we've done is
we've put too much of a burden on those diversity programs to
bear the sole responsibility of supporting students like
yourself and others to have an inclusive and an engaged
experience on campus. And so the first thing I want to
say is I want to say I think we've done a good job in one
way, but in some other ways I think we've abdicated some
responsibilities for some others that need to be critically
involved in some of that work. So you're question specifically
is what I am doing, and more broadly I'll say what are we
doing, with respect to this? A couple things.
Number one, we're working on some new scholarship programs as
we speak right now that would really focus around how do we
not just package students into those diversity programs, but
how do we help our students get packaged into to what we refer
to at this campus and nationally as high impact learning
experiences. So how do we help them get
packaged into undergraduate research programs which are
supervised in faculty mentoring relationships.
How do we help them get involved with community service
learning opportunities. How do we help them get engaged
in residential learning programs like Chadbourne that we have on
campus. How do we help our students to
get involved and be able to actually participate in study
abroad efforts. All types of experiences that we
think help our students to say, hey, this is our campus too,
we're engaged fully in the life of what this place means.
In the same instance that we're looking at some scholarship
programs that will help fund and get students priority package
there, we've been working with those programs and they've been
holding slots for us to strategically say, hey, we can
get folks engaged in some different ways.
Wren Singer, who is the director of the first year experience
program, Wren is taking a look at SOAR, and she's asking how
can we re-imagine SOAR as an experience.
One of the critical parts of that is how would SOAR become a
better platform for our underrepresented students.
Another thing that we're doing is going forward the new
director of admissions is looking at the entirety of our
operations. One of the things that I'm very
hopeful for with her is that we'll be partnering on some new
communications that we can do to underrepresented students so
that when they're on their way into the university they're
getting something that says, hey, first off we want you here,
secondly this is not going to be all peaches and cream, there's
going to be some challenge but hey, these are some of the place
that you can go to get supported and you can go to get engaged.
And so it's a multiplicitous type of strategy that we've got
to put in place. And let me say this and let me
say this publicly, even in the face of doing all that there
will still be students at this campus who are walking around
feeling marginalized, who are walking around feeling silenced,
who are walking around feeling not included and engaged, and
the unfortunate reality is for those students that experience
is mirrored at every predominate white institution in this
country whether you're talking about Harvard University,
University of Michigan, our institution or one of our fellow
institutions in the state of Wisconsin.
And that's the unfortunate reality of the racialized
dynamics of living in the United States and living in North
America. And it's an unfortunate reality.
But my final point is that HBCUs are not the land of milk and
honey either because they are also, even within those context,
factors which create division between student and community.
So oftentimes the factors that are there, it's very deeply
economic. And so it's are you a person of
privilege walking around at Spelman University or Howard
University and some other institutions.
Are you a third, fourth, fifth generation.
And also, too, let me put one final point out there, there are
times where these issues even become anchored in some things
that are deeply, historically a part of the culture of the
African American experience of color and hair texture and those
cultural identity factors. To be completely candid, and I'm
not saying that those things are overarching and everywhere, but
they're a part of the realities of those institutions that they
struggle and grapple with just as we at these institutions have
dynamics that we have to struggle and grapple with.
That's fair enough. But on the other hand I feel a
hell of a lot more welcomed sometimes at HBCUs than I do at
certain Big Ten universities. Fair enough?
[LAUGHTER] >> Absolutely.
I do too, Clif. [LAUGHTER]
The question is why. >> One last question if we
could.
Thank you for taking my question.
I'm Ruby Paredes. I'm Assistant Vice Provost for
Diversity and Climate, and I work with Damon Williams.
And it's great to welcome you back, JT.
Thank you, good to see you. >> What you shared with us about
the differential in funding is really sobering, and I'm
wondering what you might think of the strategy of strengthening
the linkages between HBCUs and large public universities that
are much better funded as a way, albeit indirectly perhaps, of
sort of equalizing those differentials in funding and
opening up more opportunity. >> It's an interesting question.
Clif alluded to the idea of programs.
If we had more time here I would probably have showed you a slide
that not only show the disparities in state
appropriations funding but also the disparity in academic
programs. >> Absolutely.
He mentioned very briefly that there is a land-grant
institution in the state of Virginia that doesn't have an
engineering program so that when you account for the
opportunities to pursue a degree in a particular field in HBCU
there are disparities. I think there are a number of
partnerships, and the couple of institutions that come to mind,
Xavier, for example, has produced pharmacists, Tuskegee
has produced engineers. These are people who go on as
undergraduates at these HBCUs but go on to pursue advanced
degrees. Here's what strikes me about
this. If you look at state funding
formulas, Jay Stampen is in the back, he taught me everything I
know about higher ed finance. If you look at the funding
formulas, here's what they're based on, generically, they vary
across state but generically here's what they're based on.
FTE, so the number of students, full-time enrollment.
You all heard me talk about the disparities in enrollments,
academic programs and the cost of programs and sort of this
sort of base budget, you what you got last year in a lot of
ways determine what you'll get this year.
So if you continue the funding formulas, they almost perpetuate
the funding disparities in the states.
Now, here's why this is the case.
Program duplication is a big deal.
There's an HBCU in Maryland and then there's a traditionally
white institution right across the street.
And the system or the legislature has to grant the
authority to establish a new degree program.
Where does it go? So I think there are some things
that we can do legislatively and legally, perhaps, to invest not
only just state appropriations dollars but academic programs.
Southern University which is in Baton Rouge, the enrollment in
their law school is about 50% white.
Interesting. They've got a program but how
many law schools in the hundred or so HBCUs are there?
I could probably count them on one hand.
So when you talk to HBCU presidents, they're interested
in partnership no doubt because of the benefits that involve for
their students but they would much rather have a high quality
academic program on their campus that would attract not only
African American students but all students in the state.
So I think that's what we're trying to move towards.
We can point to a number of partnerships that already exist
but when I talk to HBCU presidents, they're happy for
their students when they leave with an undergraduate degree and
they go to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, UW Madison to
earn a graduate degree in some field, but they'd much rather
have those programs on their campuses.
So I think that's what we want to work towards.
I think we'll continue to see the partnerships flourish and
blossom because students will continue to need opportunities.
But how do we establish and enhance programs on these
campuses will be a big part of it.
Thank you. [APPLAUSE]