Support For Minority-Serving Colleges Would Serve The U.S. Too, Report Says

Career College Central summary:

Minority-serving institutions face financial challenges and graduation rates that, in many cases, are low relative to other colleges. Exploring best practices that increase student success at minority-serving institutions is important because members of minority group will form a majority of the U.S. population by 2043.
A new report, “Lessons Learned: Implications From Studying Minority-Serving Institutions," explores these issues. Here are some of the critical findings:
- Minority-serving institutions have helped increase college-going rates among high-school graduates in underrepresented minority groups, in part through affordable tuition rates. While low tuition does help increase access, it limits the revenue available to the institutions to deliver a high-quality education.
- Minority-serving community colleges and four-year colleges had median revenue that was sharply lower than that of other community and four-year institutions.
- Minority-serving community colleges spent 7 percent less per student on instruction, academic support, and student services than did other community colleges. In contrast, minority-serving public four-year colleges were able to spend 9 percent more per student than did other four-year institutions.
- Fiscal constraints affected the performance of community colleges and four-year institutions. In 2012 the graduation rate for minority-serving community colleges was 27 percent below that of other community colleges. By contrast, the graduation rate for minority-serving public four-year colleges was nearly 10 percent higher than that of other public four-year colleges.

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