The long, winding, and neglected road - Black students do not reality education parity in Southern state college and universities

Black Issues in Higher Education, Sept 17, 1998 by Jamilah Evelyn

Kronley said that while the report was aimed at state responsibilities, it's important for everyone to be a part of the solution.

"From the governor on down to the private sector and the business sector, this all of us," he said.

Kronley noted, however, that in drafting the report, the foundation was careful not to point any fingers.

"This is much too complicated to say that this is your fault or this is their fault," he said. "The report is very clear that there are some promising practices in many states. What needs to be done next is to elevate those practices."

And elevate people to action, said Brown.

"This should be a wake-up call. It tells it like it is. Now we have to deal with it," he said.

RELATED ARTICLE: Picture Painted by SEF Not Completely Dismal

WASHINGTON -- While the Southern Education Foundation (SEF) reported last month that Blacks have made few gains in access to public institutions of higher education in the South, many scholars said they took the report with a grain of salt.

The grim statistics presented in Miles To Go -- the foundation's latest assessment of the desegregation efforts in the nineteen states that operated under dual systems of education -- are indeed alarming, said many research analysts. But other statistics points to a much brighter picture.

For example, national enrollment percentages for Black students at public Institutions are on the rise, said Dr. N Joyce Payne, director of advancement and Public Black colleges for the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant colleges.

According to recent study done by the Association of enrollment trends from fall 1990 to fall 1996, more Black students are attending public four-year institutions. Nationally, there was a 17 percent increase in all Black students attending public four-year schools, and 20 percent increase in Black females.

Payne also said that the number of minority students who are graduating from high school is one on the rise, which will presumably increase enrollment figures at colleges and universities in the near future.

Many also pointed to the fact that the average age of college students is increasing -- a fact that, if accounted for, could skew the foundation's study. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, nearly 20 percent of all undergraduates were over 24 years old in 1995. Many suspect that percentage is higher for Black students. Miles To Go compared to percentage of Black college students with the percentage of Black eighteen-to-twenty-four-years-olds in the Black population.

Additionally, looking at the bigger picture of enrollment trends in those nineteen states states requires taking the private institutions into account, said Dr. Michael Nettles, of the Frederick Patterson Research Institute, the research arm of the College Fund/UNCF.

"The privates represent 40 percent of colleges in the South and 30 percent of Black students go to private institutions," he said.

Additionally, he pointed out that while the foundation doesn't emphasize it, SEF's figures show that more Black students are at the traditionally White institutions than the historically Black ones. According to the SEF report, 34.4 percent of Black freshman were at traditionally White institutions in 1996 and 26.5 percent were at historically Black schools.