Penn State is ranked seventh in flagship state universities successfully graduating black students, according to a recent article published in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.
Nationally, the black student college graduation rate is 44 percent, and Penn State University Park's rate is 68 percent, according to the article.
Penn State Vice Provost for Educational Equity Terrell Jones said the key to better graduation rates is retention programs.
"Who you can retain is a function of who you admit," Jones said, "so we're choosing students who have a sincere goal and motivation to be successful and those students are being successful as we develop support services and opportunities to become part of the university community."
Managing editor of the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education Robert Bruce Slater wrote in an e-mail message that the students counted in the study entered a university between 1997 and 2000 and earned a degree within six years.
In the past four years, the graduation rate for black students has increased by 5 percent. However, the difference between the rate of white students graduating is 19 percentage points higher than that of black students, according to the article.
In the fall 2007 semester, University Park enrolled 1,685 black students according to the Penn State Fact Book available at budget.psu.edu. Jones said what might set Penn State apart from other state flagship schools is the Framework to Foster Diversity Plan.
"I don't know any other university that has a framework to foster diversity," he said.
The diversity plan is a list of seven challenges "to provide a concrete roadmap for achieving our diversity goals," according to the plan's Web site, equity.psu.edu. It was de-signed for the years 2004 to 2009.
In his e-mail, Slater wrote "all indications are that the main reason African American students leave college is money." Slate added that increasing the overall graduation rate for black students would be helped by increasing financial aid. He also wrote that improving the racial climates at predominantly white schools would also help.
Jones said one of the challenges in the diversity plan is to decrease the gap between the white students' graduation rate and the minority students' graduation rate.
According to the Penn State Fact Book, the six-year graduation rates of the 2001 cohort, black students graduation rate was 66 percent while white students' graduation rate was 86 percent. The total minority rate -- composed of blacks, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans -- was 74.1 percent.
Fostering diversity isn't something an office can do, Jones said; it has to be done by the community. He said he is proud of Penn State's ranking but said there is more to do.
"We will continue to create an environment that is supportive and embraces diversity," he said.
