Via The Quick and the Ed, the Education Trust releases a report about the racial gap in graduation rates at different universities. The worst offender: Wayne State in Detroit, where about a third of students are black but only 9.5 percent graduate in six years or less, compared with 43.5 percent of white students who do. That's surprisingly abysmal.
It's likely that a number of factors contribute to the extra struggles black students face, but a big part of it probably is that black students are more likely to be poor. As I wrote in June, the institutional character of colleges makes a big difference in graduation rates, and lower-income students are also less likely to have the sort of resources available that will help them choose the best school to meet their needs. More financial aid could help, but these aren't the kinds of problems solved by money alone. Low-income students likely need a vast array of services that are hard to quantify but critical to graduation.
-- Monica Potts
