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The Campaign for College Opportunity in July will issue the third in a series of reports that presents an overview of the status of California’s ethnic minorities attending college.

This next report will look at the situation for Asian Americans. According to Michele Siqueiros, president of The Campaign for College Opportunity, contrary to what many believe, Asians are not uniformly doing better than Blacks and Latinos.

“There is a significant amount of diversity among Asian students, and there are some Pacific Islanders and native Hawaiians who face challenges much like Latino and Black students,” Siquerios said.

The look at Asian students follows the “State of Higher Education in California: Black Report” which was released in May (www.collegecampaign.org/resource-library/our-publications/) and a similar report for Latinos which came out in April.

If the number of minority students graduating college does not improve, Siqueiros said the state is on track to lose one million potential workers over the next 10 years.

According to Siqueiros, there are eight key recommendations to address the challenges that Black students face in California, which is home to the nation’s fifth largest Black population:

  1. Create a state-wide plan for higher education. This will take specific and targeted options to close the gaps between White, Black and Latino students. Siqueiros notes that two-thirds of Black applicants were turned down for admission by six of the nine University of California campuses. That report is attributed partly to the fact that only 31 percent of Black students (32 percent for Hispanics) have taken the requisite courses to qualify for admission. (These same qualifications are in place for the California State University system as well.)

U.C. Riverside is reportedly doing a good job of supporting its minority students and does not have a gap in graduation rates by race. U.S. News and World Report 2013-2014 Best Colleges, ranked U.C. Riverside as 12th in the nation in diversity.

“Regardless of what ethnic group you happen to be in, or how much money you have, our graduation rates are essentially the same,” said UC Riverside Chancellor Kim A. Wilcox at an information hearing held by Assemblyman Jose Medina (D-61), chair of the Assembly Higher Education Committee, to discuss UCR’s diversity, and its initiatives to serve low-income, first-generation undergraduate students. “Few other universities in the country can say that and none with the kind of diversity that we have,” added Wilcox.

One element of the discussion that is particularly troubling Siqueiros is that the Los Angeles Unified School District, the largest public school system in the state, which in 2005 adopted a policy that required all students to be prepared to meet the college-prep requirements, is considering stepping back from that pledge, which was expected to begin with the class of 2017.

The board is slated to discuss the issue at its June 9 meeting, because so many of its Black and Brown students are not on track to meet the goal. Siqueiros believes that rather than scale back, LAUSD should do everything possible to figure out how to get students on track to meet the standards.

  1. Ensure colleges successfully move students through pre-college level courses quickly and with improved retention rates. The Campaign for College Opportunity president notes that the longer it takes for students to complete these courses, the less likely they are to graduate.

But even before moving students quickly through these pre-collegiate courses, the campaign finds that officials must do a better job of determining whether students actually belong in remedial courses.

Studies from the Community College Research Center have found that community colleges across the country unnecessarily place tens of thousands of entering students in remedial classes and that their placement decisions would be just as good, if the campus relied on high school grade point averages instead of the tests.

Taking into account the challenges with placement tests and the large number of students deemed “unprepared” by the test, Long Beach City College (LBCC) launched a Predictive Placement Pilot. The pilot is part of the Promise Pathways initiative, an ongoing collaboration between LBCC and Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) that focuses on preparation for college-level coursework, progression towards academic goals, and completion of certificates, degrees and/or transfer for students in the region. The premise of the pilot is to use student performance in high school (through GPA, grades, and standardized test scores) to predict college academic success and place students in college level courses. LBCC believes the more data they can use to place students, the more precise the placement will be, which will lead to greater student success. The stakes are high: when relying primarily upon standardized tests, over 90 percent of first-time college students assess into pre-college level English or math at LBCC. Initial results indicate that significant increases in college placement and successful course compilations are possible using a new placement model based on students’ performance in high school.

3 Provide clear transfer pathways to four-year degrees.

Identify and re-enroll adults with some college but no certificate or degree. The Campaign for College Opportunity report noted that one in three Blacks have some college classes but no degree, the highest rate of the major racial/ethnic groups. Siqueiros believes that this population is the most likely to be able to turn the situation around.

Expand college knowledge in middle and high school and invest in support services students need to succeed. Siqueiros agrees that it might even be worth looking at the techniques used by for-profit colleges, which along with community colleges (7.3 percent) have the highest enrollment of Black undergraduates (10.7 percent compared to 5.5 percent at private nonprofit universities, 4.6 percent at Cal states and 2.4 percent at UCs.)  The for-profits do a lot of marketing and outreach, aggressively help potential students access as much financial aid as possible and do quite a bit of hand-holding for pupils, many of whom are first generation college students.

Fund colleges for both enrollment growth and successful outcomes.

Strengthen financial support options for low- to moderate-income college students.

Allow California’s public universities to use race/ethnicity as one of many factors in weighing an applicants’ qualifications for admission. While, Siqueiros does not think this will happen this year or even next given the environment created by Prop. 209, which prevented the use of race in admission, she stresses that it’s important that colleges realize the importance of using such data to close the gap.

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