|
Black CollegesWe all know the importance of education, so this article needs no lengthy introduction. One of our readers has asked us for an overview of Black Colleges, and as promised by Jungle Echoes, we deliver. We would have preferred to add accounts of personal experiences to this somewhat "dry" compilation, but no-one in J.E. has studied in any of these schools. We therefore encourage readers who have to E-mail Troi directly through our Guestbook (just click on "Email Me" in his entry). We have also researched and found what Black Enterprise Magazine and Money Magazine consider to be the best 50 (for the first) and 5 (for the latter) Black Colleges. There is a short explanation of their criteria and links to these colleges' sites.
Here is a list of (with links to) 50 such colleges.
Here are the criteria used by Black Enterprise to compile the Top 50 Black Colleges list (as presented by them on their site) and a link to that list :
This universe of schools
was then grouped by a modified version of the classification developed
by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The classifications
are based upon the size of the student body, national reputation and
whether the majority of its students are drawn from across the nation
or from a particular region. The five groupings used for the purposes
of this study are: National Universities:
large, nationally known schools with active research programs.
These schools tend to draw students from across the country. DayStar then compiled
a list of 1,077 African American professionals in higher education,
including college president, faculty members and admissions administrators
employed by the 987 schools in the study. Each was asked to rate each
school within the classification of their institution on the following
scale: Strongly recommended
(5 points); Recommended (4 points); Neutral/no opinion (3 points);
Not recommended (2 points); Strongly not recommended (1 points) They were asked to
rate the schools they had some knowledge of on their academic and
social environments for black students. Of the 1,077 questionnaires
sent to participants, 506 (or 46.9%) responded with a completed survey
providing useable data. The actual rating
was computed according to a weighted and multiplied model that gave
assigned values to four measures: the average academic rating from
the survey, the average social rating, the percent of black undergraduates
in the student body for the 1996/1997 academic year and the percent
of black students in the graduating class of the same year.
The result is the BLACK ENTERPRISE/DAYSTAR TOP 50 COLLEGES -- an index of the 50 schools with the best scores, on a scale of 0-5,000, for each of the 987 schools.
Here are Money Magazine's 16 criteria to rate the best top 100 colleges and a link to that list : Entrance examination results. They used the percentage of freshmen who entered college in the fall of 1996 with both verbal and math scores above 500 on the SAT (average percentage who did that well at all colleges: verbal 62%, math 66%) or above 23 on the composite ACT (average: 37%).
High school grade point average. Using the common four-point scale, they considered the average high school GPA of the entering freshman class. Caltech had the highest average, 3.9, vs. the national average of 3.0. Faculty resources. They compared the number of full- and part-time undergraduates to the number of full- and part-time faculty. Caltech had the lowest ratio, 3 to 1, compared with the 20-to-1 average. Faculty quality. This is the ratio of students to faculty members who hold the highest degrees available in their fields. Caltech was tops with an 8-to-1 ratio; the national average is 24 to 1. Faculty deployment. They considered the ratio of students to tenured faculty who actually taught classes in the fall of 1996. Caltech had the best ratio, 5 to 1, vs. the 34-to-1 national average. Library resources. They divided the total of all reference materials, including books, periodicals and microfilm, by the number of students using the campus libraries. Yale's huge 1,472-to-1 ratio dwarfed the 192-to-1 average. Instructional budget. They used Department of Education reports to calculate each school's expenditure per student. Caltech spent the most, $47,677; the average was $5,110. Student services budget. These are the dollars a school spends on such services as career guidance and student activities. Dartmouth spends the most, $4,814 per student; the average was $1,323. Freshman retention rate. This is the percentage of 1995 freshmen who returned to each school in the fall of 1996. Yale scored best with 98%; the average was 75%. A high percentage indicates that students are happy with the education they are receiving. Also, colleges that score best on this measure have the highest percentage of students who graduate within four years, saving the cost of an extra year or more of schooling. Fully 85% of Yale's 1992 freshmen earned degrees in four years.
Five- and six-year graduation rates. This is the percentage of freshmen who graduate within five (average: 50%) or six (average: 54%) years; few colleges track students' pursuit of a degree longer than six years. They used the five-year rate only when colleges couldn't provide the six-year rate. Advanced study. They measured the percentage of graduates who went on to professional or graduate schools. The national average is 26%. Default ratio on student loans. The percentage of students who default on their loans within two years of leaving school helps identify colleges whose graduates may not be well prepared for careers. Purdue University had no defaulters; the national average is 6.9%. Graduates who earn doctorates. The National Research Council supplied us with the number of graduates from each college who went on to earn Ph.D.s between 1983 and 1992. The University of CaliforniaBerkeley had the most (3,892, 18% of its graduates in those years). Business success. They used data from Standard & Poor's Register of Corporations, Directors and Executives, which lists more than 70,000 top executives who went to college. (Yale had the most graduates in the register, 822.) The following are the magazine's top 5 Black Colleges :
If you have any comments, suggestions
or contributions, write us: This page has been viewed All graphics are created by: Grover. ©1998 All the contents of this magazine are a copyright of Jungle echoes (except where otherwise specified) ©1998 This page is hosted by Geocities. Get your own Free Home Page
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Jungle
Echoes hopes that all this will help Troi Ellis in making
a decision should he decide to tranfer. 
Daystar
Research CEO Dr. Thomas LaVeist screened more than 3,000 colleges
and universities for at least one of two characteristics. First, accredited
four-year institutions with an African American student enrollment
of at least 1.5%. Second, well-known colleges that don't meet the
first criteria but would be of significant interest to African American
students. The result was a pool of 987 colleges and universities in
the U.S.
In
computing the scores, HBCUs were individually weight-adjusted to compensate
for their overwhelming advantage on the measure of proportion of African
Americans in the sudden body, which routinely exceeds 95%. (The weights
and assigned values used in our study are the propriety information
of DayStar Research).
Class
rank. They looked at the percentage of entering freshmen who finished
in either the top fifth (average: 39%) or the top quarter (29%) of
their high school classes, depending on which statistic the colleges
could supply. 
Four-year
graduation rates. This is the percentage of students who earn
degrees in four years. The national average was 38%. 