{"id":620,"date":"2006-02-27T18:37:24","date_gmt":"2006-02-27T12:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.stier.net\/?p=620"},"modified":"2011-07-23T22:05:54","modified_gmt":"2011-07-23T22:05:54","slug":"the-real-problem-at-temple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/?p=620","title":{"rendered":"The real problem at Temple"},"content":{"rendered":"

A week or so ago I defended myself, and Temple, against David Horowitz’s charges that left-wing political correctness undermines the education we give our students. Today I want to address a real problem at Temple.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Two years ago I walked into my first class of the semester and found that I had only two African American students in my class. (My classes had typically been over fifty percent African American when I started teaching at Temple eight years ago.) After the class was over I complained to an higher level administrator.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

His response has been repeated as the company line for the last few years. Given the increase in the number of students, and especially students from the suburbs, the percentage of African American students at Temple was dropping. You can see that this is true from the following data from the recently released Temple Factbook which can be found on-line<\/a>.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Percentage of African American Students Enrolled at Temple
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

2005 16.1%
\n2004 17
\n2003 18.3
\n2002 19.2
\n2001 20
\n2000 20.3
\n1999 21
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite these figures, the administrator claimed, the absolute number of African American students was not declining at all.
\nI was not assuaged by this argument, for two reasons.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

First, it seems to me that the mission of Temple has always been to teach first generation college students for whom a college education is a key step up the class ladder. There are certainly many African American students who are capable of taking that step and Temple, in my view, should be encouraging as many of them as possible to take it.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Second, I take very seriously the argument that a diverse student body is important to a good college education. College students need to hear diverse opinions, learn about diverse cultural, ethnic, and racial groups, and learn to be comfortable interacting with all types of people. While a few percentage point decrease in African Americans might not have a dramatic effect overall, it could frequently lead, as it did in my class, to overwhelmingly white classes. Moreover, it is important to recognize that African American students, like students from every other minority group, are likely to be more comfortable and more willing to express themselves when they are a larger rather than smaller percentage of the student body as a whole.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

I tried for some time to find the absolute numbers of African American students at Temple. Recently I found them in the Temple Fact Book. They show that the company line is, in fact, incorrect. The absolute number, not just the percentage, of African American students has been declining in recent years.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Number of African American Students Enrolled in Temple (include undergraduate and graduate students)
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

2005 5,495
\n2004 5,764
\n2003 6,082
\n2002 6,258
\n2001 6,095
\n2000 5,912
\n1999 5,822
\n1998 5,638
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

This is, in my view, a serious problem. And I am not satisfied with the claim one hears at Temple that the new, and mostly, white students we are attracting from the suburbs has, because of their higher SAT scores, made Temple a better school.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

For one thing, if one compares the freshmen class in 1998 with freshman class in 2005, you will see that by any objective measure the improvement in the quality of our students is very small.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

2005
\nAverage HS Class Rank 73th percentile
\nAverage SAT Score Verbal 546
\nAverage SAT Score Math 552
\nAverage SAT Score combined 1098
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

1998
\nAverage HS Class Rank 67th percentile
\nAverage SAT Score Verbal 511
\nAverage SAT Score Math 509
\nAverage SAT Score combined 1020
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

I, along with other faculty members have noticed a significant improvement in the writing ability of our students, one that far exceeds these relatively small changes in verbal SAT scores. I find it very plausible that students coming from suburban high schools are significantly better writers than students coming out of city high schools. That is not because suburban students are any smarter, but because they have had much better training, as one would expect given that so much more money is spent per kid in the suburbs than in the city.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

It is a little easier to teach students who have had a better high school education. But the truth is that students from Philadelphia high schools are bright and motivated enough to catch up with their suburban peers in a few semesters. And there are pleasures in helping students reach their potential even if they have not had the best preparation for college. Many of our African American students from Philadelphia come to college with an eagerness and sense of gratitude at being in school that better prepared students from the suburbs don’t have. And city kids have a willingness to express themselves bluntly that make for exciting classes. Their enthusiasm more than makes up for any deficiencies that come from having an inferior high school education.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

So there is a real problem at Temple. Our expanding student body should have allowed us to better meet our mission of providing a college education to all who deserve it. Instead, we are going in the opposite direction. If 21 percent of the student body at Temple in 2005 were black, as was the case in 1998, there would be 7162 African American students enrolled today, 1672 more than there are right now.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

If our state legislators want to hold hearings about the quality of education at Temple, the key question they should be asking is: where are the missing 1672 students?
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A week or so ago I defended myself, and Temple, against David Horowitz’s charges that left-wing political correctness undermines the education we give our students. Today I want to address a real problem at Temple. Two years ago I walked into my first class of the semester and found that I had only two African American students in my class. (My classes had typically been over fifty percent African American when I started teaching at Temple eight years ago.) After the class was over I complained to an higher level administrator. His response has been repeated as the company line for the last few years. Given the increase in the number of students, and especially students from the suburbs, the percentage of African American students at Temple was dropping. You can see that this is true from the following data from the recently released Temple Factbook which can be found\u2026 Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p35YuU-a0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6080,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions\/6080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}