Opinion: Leave “ranking game” rhetoric out discussion on FAMU's grad rates

In Monday’s Tallahassee Democrat, former FAMU political science instructor Keneshia Grant (now a Ph.D. student at Syracuse University), reminded readers to compare apples with apples when discussing FAMU’s graduation rate.

As Grant pointed out, FAMU’s six-year degree completion rate is actually better than the national average for colleges with the largest numbers of low-income students.

Low-income students tend to divide much of their time between studying and working, which slows them down.

Blacks carry heaviest work schedules in college

Grant also shared data from a recent American Council of Education study that should sound alarms across Florida and the rest of the country. As she summarized:

“Blacks are more likely than any other racial group to work more than part time while they're in college; 41.3 percent of black undergraduate students work more than 35 hours per week. The [ACE] study also notes, unsurprisingly, that working more than part time has a negative effect on college students' grades and degree completion rates.”

“While blacks are disproportionately represented among those who carry heavy work schedules in college, a survey just released by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities reveals that this trend is spreading to more Americans of all races. With private loans drying up as a result of America's credit crunch, more students at private colleges are taking time off and/or enrolling only part time.”

These cold hard facts should be understood by critics who make the false claim that FAMU’s current graduation rate shows a lack of “seriousness” or “college readiness” on the part of the students. More than anything else, college graduation rates reveal how many students have enough money to enroll full-time and finish their courses quickly.

Grant’s op-ed made another observation that should be included as context whenever the 70 percent black graduation rates at University of Florida or Florida State University are brought up. Those institutions are enrolling fewer black freshman. Florida’s journalists need to ask tough questions about what those universities plan to do reverse that slide.

An attempt to place "ranking games" above Florida's economic needs

The Florida media and UF/FSU emphasis on black graduation rates, rather than black college access, appears to be part of a larger strategy to change the legislature’s student funding formula for state universities.

UF and FSU are two of the public universities that have frozen their enrollments. While they claim that declining state appropriations made this action necessary, it’s no secret that those two institutions want to place less focus on cranking out undergraduate degrees. Instead, they want to spend more of their budgets on research and graduate education, which do more to help them win at the “ranking game.”

The universities also seem to be using the enrollment freezes as a way to explain away their declining numbers of black students. With seats limited, they say that competition is tougher. Translation: Fewer black high school seniors will make the cut. The ranking game rewards universities that reject the largest number of applications and take in students with the highest standardized test scores. Low-income black students tend to have lower standardized test scores because they come from poorer school districts.

While admissions caps help universities excel at the ranking game, they hurt Florida's public institutions in the wallet. The state’s enrollment funding formula prioritizes growth, which means that revenue stream has become stagnant for UF, FSU, and the others that froze their enrollments. Now, they want to change the funding rules.

Florida legislators must reject these arguments based on elitist ranking games and continue to make college access their top concern. Magazine rankings won’t provide the college-educated workers that the state’s economy needs. Better financial aid and funding for enrollment growth will.

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