Forthcoming ETS Report proclaims the importance of HBCUs - Educational Testing Service; Historically Black Colleges and Universities - includes related article on ETS Report

Black Issues in Higher Education, Oct 2, 1997 by Karin Chenoweth

Data Shows Black Institutions Are More Likely to Produce African American Scientists

WASHINGTON - Every time the public funding of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) is discussed, the same question arises: Now that colleges and universities are no longer segregated, why should a separate system of colleges and universities, begun in the time of segregation, be maintained?

This issue is being addressed in litigation, most notably in Georgia, Alabama and in Mississippi's Supreme Court case, Ayers v. Fordice. It will undergird some of the Higher Education Act reauthorization discussions in Congress and debates in state legislatures from Maryland to Louisiana.

This year as HBCU presidents face their funders, they will have some powerful new evidence to bolster their position that their institutions perform a mission that no one else does. The Educational Testing Service (ETS) is about to issue a study that says that HBCUs do a better job than traditionally White institutions in several areas - most notably in steering African American students into the fields of engineering and the hard sciences, and in shepherding them into and preparing them for post-baccalaureate study.

These are claims that HBCU leaders have been making for years, but there has been little quantitative data to back them up. The ETS study, by Dr. Harold Wenglinsky of the Policy Information Center of the Educational Testing Service, goes part of the way toward providing that validation.

Wenglinsky said in an interview that although none of his findings will be surprising to educators who are familiar with historically Black institutions, "A lot of people not familiar with HBCUs will be surprised at the effect they have in preparing the pipeline for graduate study."

Wenglinsky examined three sources of data in drawing his conclusions:

* The National Postsecondary Student Aid Study of 1990 in which the Department of Education collected information on about 72,000 students attending postsecondary institutions. The study included a wide variety of financial information as well as educational and social experience. Wenglinsky extracted information on both Black and White students who were attending HBCUs and a comparable sample of students attending traditionally white institutions (TWIs).

* The 1993 Graduate Record Examination (GRE) database, which contains information on all students who took the GRE that year, including which undergraduate school they attended. The GRE is the exam taken by most students applying to graduate school. This database makes it possible to study students who attended HBCUs - both Black and White - and compare them to similar students who attended TWIs.

* The AAU/AGS Project for Research on Doctoral Education, a database that follows all graduate students in doctoral programs for ten fields of study from 1989 to 1994. Approximately forty major research universities are represented. The data, maintained by the Association of American Universities and the Association of Graduate Schools (AAU/AGS), is not nationally representative and includes few White students who attended HBCUs. Nevertheless, Wenglinsky argues it is still possible to draw some conclusions from the data.

Wenglinsky acknowledges the shortcomings of the data he used. For example, he points out that his study does not distinguish among the many kinds of HBCUs or TWIs - public, private, four-year, two-year, land-grant and elite liberal arts and research. Also, none of the studies are truly representative, national surveys designed for the purpose of comparing HBCUs with TWIs.

For his study, Wenglinsky says, "Data to make these comparisons are also not readily available and would have to be collected."

Dr. Michael Nettles of the Frederick Patterson Research Institute of The College Fund/UNCF, who reviewed earlier drafts of the paper, agreed that available data is inadequate to the task of really understanding the educational role of HBCUs.

"That is a technical limitation," Nettles said. "But perfection should not be the enemy of the good. He's giving it a shot anyway. That's commendable."

Each of the data sources leads Wenglinsky to separate sets of conclusions. From the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, Wenglinsky draws conclusions about why students choose HBCUs over TWIs. The two main reasons, he finds, are that their parents had attended HBCUs and that they are more affordable than TWIs - on average a little more than half the cost. A third reason is that the students wanted to be far away from their parents.

Other conclusions drawn from this data have to do with the characteristics of students attending HBCUs.

"Students attending HBCUs, and Black students in particular, are more likely to aspire to a graduate education after college and to obtain a job in one of the professions," says the ETS study.

HBCU students also, "appear to be of a much lower [socio-economic status]; the adjusted gross incomes of their parents are significantly lower than those of TWI parents," the study says.