Officials: Minority Focus Could Improve College Recruiting
Arkansas Trails Nation in Enrolling High School Graduates
Last updated Friday, August 3, 2007 9:13 PM CDT in News
By Dan Craft
THE MORNING NEWS
FAYETTEVILLE -- Arkansas is less likely to send high school graduates to college than the national average, and minority recruitment is one way to combat that problem, education officials said Friday.
While 62 percent of recently graduated high school seniors enrolled in an Arkansas college or university in 2006, that percentage trails the 2005 national average of 69 percent. National 2006 figures are not yet available.
"We've made progress, and that's good," said John White, University of Arkansas chancellor. "Have we made the progress we could and should have made? Absolutely not."
White students post a 63 percent college attendance rate, with black students at 57 percent and Hispanics at 39 percent, according to a department report.
Board chairman Kaneaster Hodges sees what lack of education can do by looking at the two prisons in his hometown.
"I look at the lack of young black males in the college enrollment numbers, and then I look at who's in the two prisons down in Newport," Hodges said. "It's a waste of human potential. We've got to find a way to convince minorities like the African-American males of the value of an education before they end up in a place like this."
Undocumented Hispanic students sometimes find access to financial aid impossible, and therefore cannot afford college, said Barry Ballard, president of Ouachita Technical College.
One student who could not receive financial aid managed to get scholarships at both Ouachita Technical College and a university, but otherwise would have been unable to attend college, Ballard said.
"This girl was carried across the Rio Grande on her father's shoulders. She doesn't remember Mexico, and she graduated Bismark High School as the valedictorian," Ballard said. "She wants to be a nurse. Do we have such a surplus of nurses that we don't need another one just because she's Hispanic and doesn't have a Social Security card? I think not."
The report compares the number of Arkansas high school graduates and the full-time freshman enrollment at all colleges and universities in the state.
Steve Floyd, interim director of the Department of Higher Education, said identifying and resolving the various problems of minority and low-income students should not only help those who are in college to succeed, but bring more of those students into the system.
Four community colleges around the state are participating in Achieving the Dream, a program designed to encourage enrollment and track retention of minority and low income students, Floyd said.
"This is something that's working in the K-12 community, but has never really been addressed in higher education," Floyd said. "When younger students struggle, the perception is that the fault lies with the teacher or the school. In higher education, the fault is perceived to lie with the student, and that's simply not always true."
By the Numbers
Arkansans With College Degrees
Arkansas ranks 49 among the 50 states in percentage of adults over age 25 with a bachelor's degree or higher, although the state's numbers have increased since 1990.
* 1990: 13.3 percent
* 2000: 16.7 percent
* 2006 (estimate): 19 percent
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
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