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| Close the Racial Graduation Gap
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However the Supreme Court rules on affirmative action in college admissions, Education Secretary Rod Paige says the Bush administration will pursue "race-neutral" alternatives. That's fine with me, although I think a true race-neutral solution to helping disadvantaged students earn college degrees will cost more money than this administration or this Congress has shown a willingness to spend.
I've always found it curious that of all the education programs we Americans could argue about, we seem to spend more time, energy and money arguing about affirmative action admissions, which actually help the fewest students. Despite the doomsday scenarios painted by some affirmative action proponents, fewer than a fourth of the nation's colleges and universities are selective enough to consider race among other factors in the process of determining which applicants will be admitted.
And, despite the complaints of some affirmative action opponents, most minorities admitted to top schools are well qualified. They're so well qualified, in fact, that were they to be rejected by elite academies, they would be quickly snapped up by other fine schools.
But, while the nation has flapped its jaws over affirmative action in college admissions for the past three decades, the gap between blacks and whites in college graduation rates has grown wider. Today, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, a black high school graduate is about one-fourth less likely to attend a four-year college than a white high school graduate–and only 50 percent are as likely to graduate!
In short, black and white youths appear to have gotten the message that a college degree is very important. However, more blacks drop out, most often in their freshman or sophomore year, according to a recent analysis of Education Department figures by Douglas J. Besharov, with the assistance of Christopher Brown, at the American Enterprise Institute.
And, broken down along gender lines, the situation looks worse, especially for black males. Some 44 percent of black males entering college, compared to 29 percent of entering black females, fail to earn a four-year degree by age 30, compared to 23 percent for white males and 19 percent for white females, Besharov found.
In short, more young people of all races aspire to get some education beyond high school but more also are failing to achieve their goal. The biggest reason appears to be money, or the lack of it. Federal Pell grants, which currently pay up to $4,000 per year of college costs for about 4 million of the nation's neediest students, have sharply declined as a percentage of average college tuition, fee, room and board costs. While costs at the average public four-year college or university grew from $5,574 in 1975 to $9,135 in 2002, Pell grants shrank from covering 84 percent of the cost to only 44 percent, Besharov found.
Yet, a 1995 study by the federal General Accounting Office concluded that a mere $1,000 increase in the average Pell grant would result in a 23 percent higher retention rate between freshman and sophomore years, and a 15 percent retention increase between the junior and senior years.
President Bush's proposed budget calls for a Pell grant increase, but only to make up for a shortfall in the amount that Congress currently has authorized for the grants. And, just to show that shortchanging low-income college students has become a bipartisan deal these days, President Bill Clinton's 25 percent increase in Pell grant funding, which took effect in 1997, also failed to keep up with either what Congress originally authorized, or with rising college costs. According to his political advisor Dick Morris's memoir, Behind the Oval Office, Clinton chose to push for a tuition tax credit instead, which Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin ridiculed as "opening the treasury door to pass out goodies before the [1996] election."
Goodies to the middle class. Today's political landscape struggles mightily for middle-class swing voters, while earnest, aspiring low-income youths of all colors find a college degree to be increasingly economically elusive.
One might think that a country that recently was willing to offer $25 billion to Turkey, and billions more to the new Iraq and Afghanistan, might find a few billion here and there to help more of its own aspiring but poor young citizens earn a college degree. It's easier, however, to argue endlessly about hot-button issues like affirmative action, even though its impact for better or worse is remarkably modest.
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By Clarence Page
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