Toldson: AJC published b.s. ("bad stats") article on HBCU graduation rates

Ivory A. Toldson, former director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities and a member of the Howard University faculty, recently took an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article to task for its use of b.s. (“bad stats”) to describe HBCU graduation rates.

From the essay “Low Graduation Rates Aren’t an HBCU Thing” published by The Root:

A black woman with a teenage son told me that several people had sent her the recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution article about black colleges “struggling” with low graduation rates to warn her against sending her son to an HBCU. The article’s headline stated that the six-year graduation rates at “many” HBCUs are lower than 20 percent.

With no mention of the total number of HBCUs anywhere in the article, the reader must infer what “many” means. In total, 101 HBCUs currently qualify for federal support; therefore, the AJC’s definition of “many” is just shy of 20 percent. In addition, according to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, 602 non-HBCU institutions of higher education, including predominantly white institutions, have graduation rates of 20 percent or less. This represents just shy of 20 percent of all institutions of higher education with data available for analysis. So if 20 percent means “many” to the AJC, the article should have been titled, “6-Year Graduation Rates at Many Colleges and Universities Lower Than 20 Percent,” and “HBCU” removed from the center of the story.

As with most sectors of higher education, HBCU graduation rates are normally distributed around a mean. The AJC irresponsibly took HBCUs from the far right of the bell curve and presented them as the HBCU norm, thereby giving the impression that low graduation rates are common, even ubiquitous, among HBCUs…

When used effectively, graduation rates can offer a meaningful way to compare peer institutions, as well as a uniform method for individual institutions to measure success and establish strategic priorities. Popular media outlets like the AJC could promote good higher education practice and policy with a nuanced interpretation of the graduation rates, which highlights students rather than numbers.

For black people who, like the woman I referenced in the opening paragraph, are being fed this b.s. article (“b.s.” meaning “bad stats”), remember that when it comes to black people, if it sounds too bad to be true, it probably is.

Black people need black people who believe in black people enough not to believe every bad thing they hear about black people.

Read the full essay here.