Four Wisconsin Colleges Plan to Eliminate Their Racial Disparities
UW-Milwaukee, Parkside, Carthage and MATC want to eliminate their educational equity gaps by 2030.
UWM Sandburg Residence Halls. Photo by Christopher Hillard.
Four colleges and universities in southeastern Wisconsin are partnering in a first-of-its-kind effort to reduce enrollment, retention and graduation disparities between students of color and their white counterparts.
UW-Milwaukee, UW-Parkside, Carthage College and Milwaukee Area Technical College announced Wednesday that they have partnered with education consulting group Education Advisory Board to eliminate graduation equity gaps at their institutions by 2030.
Some of the software, developed by EAB, has already been used at Georgia State University.
Georgia State University’s Perimeter College announced in 2019 that over a three-year period, it had more than doubled its graduation rate and cut graduation rate gaps between Black and white students in half. It also said that the gaps between white, Latino and low-income students have been eliminated.
Wisconsin’s overall graduation rate across higher education has been improving slightly, according to data released in March by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. It showed that 68 percent of students who enrolled in Wisconsin colleges and universities in 2013 graduated within six years, up slightly from the 62 percent graduation rate among those who enrolled in 2009.
But six-year graduation rates at public colleges and universities varied widely when broken down by race, according to the data. Just more than 40 percent of Black students graduated within the six-year window. For white students, it was more than 76 percent. For Hispanic students, the graduation rate was 61 percent, while 66 percent of Asian students graduated in six years.
Latoya White, the Education Advisory Board’s senior direction director, said her organization will provide the four campuses with discounted prices for data-tracking software it has developed that uses multiple metrics to determine if students are falling behind.
“What this does is break down those silos across campus so that advisors, tutors, faculty, even financial aid can collaborate together in a unified system,” White said. “And the students themselves (work) with those support structures in a shared workspace. Through this, they’ll be able to have all of their activities, initiatives, schedules, all in one place, recorded, tracked and assessed.”
UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone said that as one of the first steps in the initiative, a group of 400 staff members from participating campuses will take equity skills training.
Mone said he’s eager to eliminate graduation rate discrepancies between students coming from low- and high-income families, as well as those between students of color and their white counterparts.
“We want them to graduate at the same rate as all our students by 2030,” said Mone. “That’s an ambitious goal, but we think we can do it.”
UW-Parkside Chancellor Debbie Ford said Wednesday that her campus had previously partnered with 17 others, including Milwaukee Area Technical College, on an initiative called the Higher Education Regional Alliance dedicated to closing achievement gaps between students and helping grow the state’s workforce. She said the Moon Shot initiative would strengthen those efforts, along with UW-Parkside’s goal of growing its graduation rate 50 percent by 2025.
Listen to the WPR report here.
Southeastern Wisconsin Colleges, Universities Partner To Eliminate Disparities In Graduation Rates was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
Where is the fierce urgency of now? Committing to eliminate racial disparities in ten years, sixty-seven years after Civil Rights Act was passed, moves the goal posts so far down the road it lacks accountability. In ten years it is more than likely that the signatories of the commitment will have moved on and their ten year plan long forgotten.