Did you know: A University of Pennsylvania professor says Black male college students fare poorly in nation and Birmingham.

Colleges and universities need to better engage black male students if they are to retain and graduate more of them and send more on to graduate and post-graduate studies, a national expert on race and education said today.

Shaun Harper, a professor of higher education management at the University of Pennsylvania and author of a landmark study on black student achievement, told an audience at the University of Alabama at Birmingham that little progress has been made nationally in improving the plight of black male students.

Just 4.3 percent of all college students nationally are black men, the same percentage of the national student body that was black and male in 1976, he said. And 67.6 percent of black male college students fail to graduate within six years, giving them the worst graduation rate among any category of students.

Harper spent two years interviewing successful black male college students on 42 campuses for his national black male college achievement study, the largest-ever study of black male undergraduates. He found that the key to success lies in getting students involved in their universities, Harper told a town hall-style meeting of UAB students, faculty and administrators.

“It continues to sadden me that progress is so slow,” he said. “Black men are disengaged.”

Harper, who is the only black professor in his field at an Ivy League university, said the responsibility for improvement lies with university administrators who should develop formal plans to better involve black students in academic life. Colleges, including UAB, need to actively encourage black male students — who are more at risk that black female students — to involve themselves on campus and get academic support.

Stan Diel

Source: www.al.com / The Birmingham News