UW-Madison Can and Must Do Better
There are just 616 African-American undergraduates enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 616. On a campus with nearly 30,000 undergraduates. 2 percent.
That’s down from 763 African-American students enrolled in 2006, or 2.7% of the undergraduate enrollment. Today there are just 221 African-American graduate students (there were 209 in 2006).
In total, this “progressive” campus enrolls just 3,013 students of color, representing an increase of less than one-third over the prior decade, a time in which Wisconsin (and the nation) became increasingly racially diverse — especially among college-age individuals. Data from the Education Trust (which calls the university an “engine of inequality”) show that UW-Madison compares unfavorably to peers of all kinds.
At UW-Madison African-American undergraduates traverse a campus in a sea of white folks, day in and day out. It’s alienating. It’s frightening. And it’s entirely fixable. This is about people’s choices. Not just anyone’s choices, though. The choices of the people with the money and power — those who work in Bascom Hall and UW Foundation.
(Sidenote: For example UW-Madison seniors of color are more likely than majority students to experience lower-quality interactions with other students on campus. See Table 13)
Yes, there are many ways for UW-Madison’s Administration to ensure that people of color are represented and respected on campus. It must start with an honest rethinking of who is admitted to UW-Madison and why.
This is a critical matter deserving of public scrutiny it’s never really received. Over the last decade I served on the shared governance committee on undergraduate recruitment, retention, and financial aid (CURAFA). In that role I learned that decisions about who attends UW-Madison are made by the Division of Enrollment Management, the Provost, and the Chancellor — faculty, staff, and students have no role in decision-making. Administrators decide who will be educated and who will be peers and live among one another, without talking with those educating and serving students — or the students themselves. And no one consults the people of Wisconsin.
2 percent in 2016. Clearly, the Administration needs help. So here I’ll break it down, focusing on admission, which is the key rationing mechanism driving who appears on campus each fall and spring.
How many students are admitted each year and who they are depends on (a) the institution’s capacity to serve students, (b) who applies, and (c) what criteria are used for admission (there are other factors too but this is where I will focus for now).
- Capacity and scale.
For the last 40 years, the number of undergraduates enrolled at UW-Madison has hardly budged (especially compared to other universities in the state) even though high school graduation and college-going rates, as well as transfer rates, have grown substantially (see p.20 in the Data Digest). Why? What prevents the institution from recognizing growing demand and accommodating it by opening up more slots? After all, our peers have done exactly that — it’s part of being a new American university.
Well, for one thing, the university is very focused on rankings, and therefore on how many students it rejects. The more rejections, the lower the admissions rate, the more “prestigious” it seems. Too many folks are like Groucho Marx, uninterested in being part of any club that would accept people like themselves as members. In other words, they secretly like it when (others) are turned down.
There are also people who contend that if UW-Madison admitted more students, it would be stealing from other universities in the state. But the data don’t provide much support for this. Many in-state students who apply to Madison go out-of-state when they are not admitted. They go over to Minnesota, to take advantage of the reciprocity agreement. This is unfortunate, since they rarely return. And, there are plenty of non-Wisconsin students who apply to Madison but don’t apply anywhere else in the state. (I saw all of this information when I was serving on CURAFA — I do not see it online.) If enrolling them improves the educational experience on campus (rather than the current focus —improving the financial bottom line), why not admit more of them?
(Sidenote: I hear it has to do with the Chemistry department and lab space. But I see little evidence that Madison’s done what its peers have, to rethink how instruction and labs are conducted, to move to 24 hour a day availability, etc. I’m confident that if the university invested in the Chemistry department to facilitate enrollment expansion, the department would rise to the occasion.)
The fact that so many Wisconsin taxpayers and legislators know talented students who are rejected from Madison contributes to the resentment facing the university. Accepting as many qualified in-state students as humanly possible will reducing that animosity (which if done right could boost appropriations), and accepting out-of-state students who enrich the academic experiences of in-state students will improve the quality of the education and the bottom line.
2. Recruitment
Communities all over Wisconsin report that the Office of Admissions is neglecting them. Tribes are well-aware that recruiters rarely visit. Milwaukee Public Schools consistently report receiving little attention. And at a time in which Promise programs are robust, UW-Madison offers not a single one.
But recruiters are spending plenty of time out-of-state (I see them on flights to/from DC, NY, and Atlanta constantly) and internationally. And it shows (see the data described below).
To make matters worse, this year UW-Madison took a step backward by adopting the Common Application. As the Juvenile Law Center reports, the application asks people if they’ve committed crimes. This doesn’t prevent crime. It simply prevents people from applying to college. It’s a practice with disproportionate impact on people of color. Why is UW-Madison supporting this?
(ED and DOJ just came out against it: http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/education-department-pushes-alternatives-criminal-history-questions-college-admissions )
The PEOPLE program is supposed to be UW-Madison’s answer to in-state recruiting of students of color. But this program does not receive the support and attention it requires in order to be sufficiently effective (I say this having chaired the evaluation oversight committee for the last 2 years — I’m hoping the evaluation will be released soon).
It’s time to do much, much better. Ditch the Common App. Hire recruiters from tribes and communities across the state and task them with building strong relationships. Build on the sizable efforts in both Madison Metropolitan School District (especially the AVID/TOPS program) and the Milwaukee Public Schools to prepare students for college, and PROMISE those students that if they get ready for higher education, UW-Madison will get ready for them.
This is part of being a good community member. AVID/TOPS is growing the number of students of color going on to college, but it isn’t boosting 4-year college-going rates mainly because the only university in town that has room for many of them is UW-Madison. Yet it continues to exclude them by offering high prices and relying on test scores (more on that below). It has to stop. Like Syracuse, Madison ought to say YES to education for those in its community — and mean it.
3. Admissions
At a time when the racial biases in standardized testing are well-established, and at a time when UW-Madison is under fire for its lack of racial diversity, and at a moment when affirmative action is continuously threatened, UW-Madison is still obsessed with testing. Indeed, staff recently released this report that’s all about high-scoring students and contains zero discussion of income or race — even though the national concern is about the exclusion of high-scoring low-income students. Why would Administration request such a report? Because it clearly makes a case for “merit” aid.
This obsession is ridiculous. UW-Madison does not need the ACT to tell us who we have the capacity to educate. It’s time to go test-optional.
UW-Madison and its long commitment to standardized testing also has a long history of denying admission to African-American students. Indeed, African-American applicants are excluded during the UW-Madison admissions process more than other group of students. Under Chancellor Biddy Martin (2008–2011), the number of African-American applicants grew (from 728 to 1129) but the fraction of African-Americans admitted declined from almost 37% to 25% — in part due to an overreaction to attacks on affirmative action brought by outside groups — and it’s never recovered. In 2015, just 30% of African-American applicants were admitted, compared to 54% of white applicants.
During that same period, the ACT score seems to have played an increasingly important role in the admissions process. In 2007, 7.5% of new students had an ACT score below 24, while 8% had a score over 32. In 2015, just 4% had a score below 24, while the percent of students with scores over 32 grew to 17% (see p.18 in the Data Digest).
There is no doubt that the reliance on the ACT in the admissions process at UW-Madison (even as one factor among many) deters many students from even applying. While Biddy Martin hired an African-American director of admissions in 2010, applications among that group is up just 22% since that time — compared to an 88% increase in applications among Hispanics, a 65% increase in applicants among international students (despite Admin claims, this was no accident), and a 44% increase in applicants among non-residents. Applications among Native Americans declined during that time. (Sidenote: Someone should examine trends in African-American applications by socioeconomic status and residency, as I suspect all of the growth here is among nonresidents who do not qualify for the Pell Grant. The yield is way down among African-Americans too (from 50% in 2008 to 40% in 2015) and I think this is because those admitted are wealthier high-testing students with many alternative options. The publicly available data doesn’t allow me to examine this.)
Using the ACT also allows the university to tell itself that it doesn’t have enough “qualified” students of color in its applicant pool (e.g. in the top 25% of his/her high school class and scoring above the Wisconsin ACT average of 22) and thus rationalize the present situation. As if there are only 102 qualified African-Americans in Wisconsin each year. Nonsense. The fraction of African-American Wisconsin high school graduates going on to 4-year colleges and universities grew from 38% in 2009–2010 to almost 48% in 2013–14. The k-12 schools are doing their jobs, and there is plenty of talent in Wisconsin that isn’t well-measured by test scores. The experience of public institutions including Temple University is that going test-optional boosts applications among students of color (the experience is more mixed at private institutions). As a shared governance committee said years ago: we need to try this.
Those focused on rankings should like a move to test-optional admissions, since the average scores among those who submit them tend to rise. There is little reason to believe that students who don’t submit test scores “can’t” succeed at Madison. It is our job to admit students who can benefit from a UW-Madison education, not decide who is “deserving” of the experience based on their performance on a multi-hour exam. Research shows that an ACT or SAT score measures how many times you took the test and who prepped you (e.g. your parental education and income) and how anxious or calm you are when taking it (e.g. how much stigma you incur). But your trajectory of academic performance in high school set against the context in which you were educated, coupled with your essay (and perhaps an online interview) tells us so much more. Others are doing better in their admissions practices — UW-Madison should too.
Let’s be honest — none of this is new. The #RealUW is entirely unsurprising. We have an Office of Admissions that believes that there are the “right” and “wrong” kinds of students of color (she once told me we wouldn’t want to admit “students who couldn’t succeed” as if the ability to succeed were set in stone and not profoundly raced and classed, and the former Provost agreed with her saying that it would be “immoral” to admit them), and a Chancellor who believes that high prices don’t scare low-income students if only financial aid is available. In 2006, 21% of entering first year students were the first in their family to attend college, while in 2015 that number had dropped to 15% (more on that trend). While universities across the nation saw the fraction on their entering students receiving the Pell Grant climb substantially, UW-Madison’s barely budged from just 10 to 12% (see p.20 in the Data Digest). Faculty across the university tell themselves stories about lazy students with low test scores to justify their inability to educate diverse populations. And students pat themselves on the back for being “worthy” of admission, rather than wondering what indeed they did to “deserve” it.
For years, shared governance committees like CURAFA and also diversity plans like 2008 have called out these problems. They have made recommendation after recommendation. Yet nothing has changed. The trends are in the wrong direction. We can’t rely on the Administration to do better. We must demand it.
