A recent report released by the Education Trust highlights a disparity between the graduation rates of whites and underrepresented minorities at colleges across the country, including Tufts.
According to the report, nationally 67 percent of white students graduate within six years while only 46 percent of African Americans and 47 percent of Latinos do the same.
At Tufts, all students graduate at a higher rate than the national average and the gap between whites and minorities is considerably smaller, at 12.2 percentage points. Tufts' graduation rate for white students is 91.1 percent, while underrepresented minorities graduate at a rate of 79.7 percent.
Despite being smaller than the national average, the disparity at Tufts is larger than that of its similar institutions. Tufts has the second-largest gap out of all NESCAC division schools; only Bates College has a larger disparity. Williams College, by contrast, has a gap of only 2.2 percentage points, and Amherst College has a gap of only 2.9 percentage points.
The Administration is aware of the gap but Dean of Undergraduate Education James Glaser said that the disparity is not something the administration is focusing on in particular. "There is faculty interest and formal faculty discussion about student performances, but it's not directed to this particular problem," he said.
Nonetheless, Glaser said that the gap "is not something that's okay," adding that "we want it to go away."
"There are many gaps out there - we know that those gaps exist, and it's our job to educate every student who comes here," Glaser said.
There are no efforts aimed specifically at helping underrepresented minority students. "You have to approach the problem individual by individual," Glaser said.
Struggling students are directed to the Academic Resource Center and the Counseling Center. Julie Jampel, a senior staff psychologist at the Counseling Center, said the Center works to help minority students. "We do especially try to reach out to foreign students and minority students, because they are less likely to come in," Jampel said.
Although there are no large-scale programs devoted to students of color, "the counseling does have a cultural perspective," Jampel said. "We have minority staff who are always available to meet with someone who would like to meet with [a staffer of] a similar minority."
Associate Psychology Professor Keith Maddox suggests that a minority-focused approach may be more useful in closing the gap.
"A lot of [the gap's cause] has to do with some of the unique characteristics of being a student of color," said Maddox, whose research focuses on issues of race, education and prejudice. "You need to have programs that are focused specifically on that, because those characteristics and those problems are unique to those students and not to others. Having a general program isn't enough because it doesn't help to deal with any of those specific problems."
Those problems, Maddox said, include being comfortable at a University where the majority of students are white, and possibly not having enough faculty members with whom to identify.
"It's just helpful to be able to see people in [faculty] positions that look like you, that might be a little bit more understanding of presenting the information in ways more similar to the ways you view the world," Maddox said.
Maddox believes that Tufts' culture houses play an important role in helping students of color to feel more comfortable.
"The culture houses represent an opportunity for minority students to have a haven where you know that there are going to be people there who have similar experiences that you have, and know what it's like to be in an environment where you are a minority," he said.
Despite repeated requests for comment, representatives from the Africana Center and Latino Center were unavailable at press time.
Problems can occur when culturally specific organizations become a source of alienation. According to Maddox, this can happen if "people who are outside of those culture houses don't feel like they can take advantage of them as well. What would be ideal is if white students, or students of a majority, felt comfortable going into culture houses and interacting."
Maddox acknowledged that this is a difficult equilibrium to reach: "It's a delicate balance," he said. "You have to have [culture-specific programs] for people to feel comfortable, but you also have to have programs that are going to encourage people to move across boundaries."
The Education Trust report highlighted a number of universities that had made increasing minority graduation rates a priority. The chancellor for the University of Georgia, Thomas Meredith, developed a five-year strategy committed to increasing the graduation rate, including the creation of a Graduation Rate Taskforce to evaluate strategies and practices for accomplishing their goal.
Tufts, however, is not planning any changes in response to the report's publication. "We do our best to provide the opportunities, resources, guidance and nurturing for all students," Glaser said.
