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Morehouse College, an institution that prides itself on educating the Black male, shows a 61 percent graduation rate as of 2007 according to the Department of Education. Morehouse falls third on the list of prominent Black institution graduation rates behind Spelman College (81 percent) and Howard University (69 percent).

Black males attending HBCUs graduate at a lower rate than women since 43 percent of Black women earn a bachelors degree within six years.

The Associated Press statistics, which are based on government data about 83 federally designated HBCUs, report that women outnumber men at HBCUs 61 to 39 percent. The Atlanta University Center website reported that in the fall of 2006, the AUC ratio of women to men was 57 to 43 percent, including Clark-Atlanta University (undergraduate and grad students), Morehouse, Spelman and the Morehouse School of Medicine.

In response to the HBCU gender gap, Sydney Starke, a freshman psychology major at Spelman College, said, “I think the media has a lot to do with it. You always see a lot of men making it without an education, but you never really see successful women without educations. … I feel that women are raised differently to believe that in order to make it you must receive an education.”

Brennan Hawkins, a freshman economics major at Morehouse, said, “Many Black men regard education as a burden, and believe they can succeed without receiving a formal education. Whereas, women appear to be, on the whole, more appreciative of education and its intrinsic value.”

One Morehouse administration member claims that the graduation rates are due to students’ decisions. Khagesh Pathak, director of the Office of Assessment and Institutional Research, says, “I have evaluated about 10 factors that affect the graduation rate [of Black males]. Some of these factors include [the student’s] high school GPA, withdrawal from [college] classes, the [student’s] frequency of changing their major, and whether or not the student is in the honors program.”

Pathak’s research has shown that students who enter college in the institution’s honors program have a higher likelihood of not only graduating, but graduating sooner. Furthermore, he said, “Because students who enter an institution in the honors program are forced to keep a certain GPA to remain in the program and/or keep their scholarship, they are more likely to take each class a little more serious than a student who is not in the honors program.”

When Pathak was asked if HBCUs could do anything to help raise the graduation rates of their students, he responded by saying, “I believe it is solely on the students. While the institution could do things such as not allow the changing of majors or the withdrawal from classes, these options are not practical or likely.”

Hawkins said, “Speaking from my own experience at Morehouse College, I believe that the importance of education is not adequately appreciated by much of the student body, and that many of the men at Morehouse are more concerned about non-academic issues than they are about school work."

Nicolas Aziz

Staff Writer

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