Study: Hispanic and Black Colleges Get a Bad Rap for Graduation Rates

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The graduation rate at Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) is 11% behind that of traditional institutions, and historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) lag 7% behind.

These stats don’t look good, but they’re not the whole story.

Researchers found that HBCUs and HSIs often deal with the significant challenge of limited institutional resources and having a student body that is less academically prepared than traditional schools and tend to receive less financial aid, according to a study in Research in Higher Education, which examined data from minority-serving institutions (MSIs) in Texas, Futurity reports:

These and other differences in student population skew the statistics and unfairly put MSIs in a bad light…

…At the same time, MSIs often function with limited institutional resources.

“Minority-serving institutions are doing more with less,” says coauthor Toby J. Park, assistant professor and senior research associate in the Center for Postsecondary Success at Florida State University. “And that needed to be factored into the analysis.”

According to Futurity, when researchers compared students with similar preparation and background, there was no difference in the likelihood of graduation based on whether they were enrolled in an MSI or traditional school. This makes MSIs important for increasing graduation rates in the U.S., which is becoming increasingly diverse.