Spelman President speaks of crisis: Black student college enrollment project to flatline in next few years

The USA TODAY carried a very carefully worded comment by the president of Spelman College reaction to the just released American Council on Education report on minority undergraduate and graduate enrollments. Despite inner city unemployment levels three times the Great Depression (80 percent) and other major economic and educational challenges, minority enrollment rose by 50.7 percent to 4.7 million between 1993 and 2003. According to Ms. Tatum “Student of color often have limited access to the courses they need… (and) college guidance. And a key reason some minority college students don’t persist is because “they’re simply running out of money”.

The report stated that 47.3 percent of white high school graduates ages 18 to 24 attend college, vs. 41.1 percent of Black and 35.2 percent of Hispanic high school graduates. The report fails to point out that only 30 percent of the inner city student entering school ever finish. Of the 30 percent that finish school, less than 40 percent have the necessary courses to go to a four year college.

According to President Tatum, many of those that make it to college run out of money. The base number of Black student is so low that any increase in the number of students would appear statically as a large improvement. According to the report, Black college enrollment increase only 100,000 per year for the last 10 years. For the next 9 years the College Board model, projects to Black enrollment to first flat line around 28,000 increases and then fall until 2015.

The FBI most dangerous 25 cities are also the most educationally endanger system cities. The two million Black males in jail out number the Black males in four year colleges. The report as nothing about the educational potential of the 7 million unemployed American youth jailed in 700,000 former industrial parks by the import of two trillion dollars US multinationals Chinese slave goods and service.