Dive Brief:
- Minority students are just as likely to attain their undergraduate degrees at historically black or Hispanic colleges as they are at traditional institutions, according to a study.
- Previously, the commonly held belief was that minority students automatically would have lower graduation rates in the minority-serving institutions.
- The authors of the study, from Florida State and Vanderbilt universities, reached their conclusion by accounting for differences in student populations and the resources of minority-serving institutions versus traditional schools.
Dive Insight:
The study doesn’t challenge the graduation statistics themselves, which show Hispanic-serving institutions lagging behind traditional schools by 11% and historically black schools trailing by 7%. But the student populations are different at the minority-serving colleges and universities, as judged by their preparation and backgrounds. When researchers did an apples-to-apples comparison of minority students who had similar preparation and backgrounds, they determined that the minority-serving schools “are doing more with less.” The study’s authors are Toby Park, assistant professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Florida State, and Stella Flores, associate professor of Public Policy and Higher Education at Vanderbilt's Peabody College of Education and Human Development.