Dear Abby:
The black middle class seems constantly in the news these days. You saw yesterday’s story in the Wall Street Journal on the persistence of anxiety among those who succeed. The day before the New York Times reported on an intriguing new study that attempts to identify the 50 top colleges and universities at which “African Americans are most likely to succeed.” Oddly enough, the story makes no mention at all of the book the daily Times has almost anointed as the work of the year–Bowen and Bok’s The Shape of River. B & B argue, as most readers of Slate will know, that the elite schools are make-or-break for black students. Schools like Princeton and Duke and Haverford have created the backbone of the black middle class, they claim.
Now the Times reports the results of a survey quite at odds with the Bowen and Bok study. Over a thousand African American professionals working in higher education were asked which schools are best for black students. Among the top six are four–all of them historically black colleges–that Bowen and Bok had data on, but chose to ignore. In fact, every one of the nine top choices in the new survey are HBCs.
The opinions of black professionals are not necessarily the last word on the subject, obviously. Have many are plugging the schools they themselves attended? Why does being of a certain race make you an expert on what is best for all members of that race? Is Florida A&M (#3) really a better place for a black student than the University of Florida at Gainesville? Is North Carolina A&T (#9) indeed better than the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill? Both seem doubtful generalizations. Is Spelman (#1) better than Stanford (#9)? Which school is “best” obviously depends upon the academic skills and interests of the individual student.
I am amused that the story quotes the executive editor of Black Enterprise, which funded the study, as saying that he hoped that publishing the rankings would somehow help to “achieve greater diversity of colleges.” Since the proportion of the student body that is black ranged from 87 to 99 percent in the top 9 schools listed, prospective students who took these rankings seriously would elect to go an HBC, thus reducing racial diversity elsewhere in higher education.
Interesting story, but I wish the author had made an effort to place it in the context of the current debate over racial preferences in higher education.
Steve
