The Education Trust recently formed a coalition of 11 minority serving institutions in an effort to boost minority student graduation rates. The Optimizing Academic Success and Institutional Strategy (OASIS) initiative will bring members together to examine best practices for enhancing student success in areas such as student advising and counseling, as well as developmental coursework. The efforts will be focused on ways to increase minority student college graduation rates and reducing the racial gap in graduation rates. Currently, the Black student college graduation rates nationwide is more than 20 percentage points lower than the rate for Whites.
Among the participating institutions are four historically Black universities: Florida A&M University, Morgan State University in Baltimore, North Carolina A&T State University, and North Carolina Central University.
Debra Saunders-White, chancellor of North Carolina Central University in Durham, stated that “by working together, sharing ideas and proposing solutions, I believe NCCU and our 10 allies in this endeavor will make significant strides in closing the graduation gap that exists for underserved minorities. This partnership will be another strong tool for NCCU to use in addressing our No. 1 priority, student success.”
I think this initiative is well worth the effort given the low graduation rates of black student at HBCU’s as well as other institutions. The initiatives will hopefully encourage best practices that involve improving pedagogy among faculty who are on the front lines as to what happens in the classroom (faculty-student interaction). The other important issue is where data informed decisions are made from a holistic point of view in helping students to persist and complete their respective degree programs.