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Pitt ties funding to increasing minority grads
Thursday, January 28, 1999 By Bill Schackner, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Having spent decades trying to boost minority graduation rates with limited success, the University of Pittsburgh is trying a new approach: giving its deans a nudge in the wallet.
Pitt has signed off on a plan that will tie the budgetary process in each of its schools to the ability to make the graduation rates and grade point averages of minority students equal to those of white students.
By March 1, deans must submit, as part of their annual funding requests, assessments of where the rates stand and concrete plans to raise them. If they fail to show gradual improvements, they could lose a portion of their budgets.
Colleges across the nation have struggled to boost minority achievement. At Pitt, despite a variety of efforts, a 20 percent gap remains between graduation rates of white students and those of black students, the largest minority on campus.
According to the most current data from Pitt's main campus, 63 percent of white students graduate in six years, compared with 43 percent of black students; 60 percent of Asian students and 53 percent of Hispanic students graduate in six years.
Provost James Maher said yesterday he hopes to see the rates reach equal footing six years from now. At a minimum, he wants each school to show "substantial measurable" results in two years.
Maher said he knew of no other university trying anything as concrete. He said Pitt and other universities could not afford to continue losing minority students who are recruited, then fall behind and drop out.
"If you look at the young people of this country, they are very diverse. The educational system has to educate that diverse workforce of the future," he said. "I see this as a major national challenge. We can't afford to fail to educate them."
Maher said that setting specific goals is risky because the university could find in five years that it has fallen significantly short of its goals. But having those goals gives the schools something to shoot for.
"It's aggressive," he said, "and I think even more important than being aggressive is it's concrete. Once your goal is concrete you can ... create benchmarks along the way to assess whether you are getting there."
The goals are part of a broader effort under way at Pitt for more than a year to take a hard look at how well it does at ensuring that minority students succeed once they arrive on campus.
As part of the push, administrators and faculty are being asked to come up with ways to steer larger numbers of students toward fields in which there are lucrative openings but too few minority candidates. They are also being asked to figure how to bring job placement rates for black and other minority students up to those of white students.
The plan was discussed yesterday during a meeting of the Pitt trustees' affirmative action committee. The plan is being mounted at a time when race-based policies on college campuses are under attack.
William Savage, assistant to the chancellor and director of affirmative action at Pitt, said he sees no connection between those challenges to admissions and a program that strives to ensure everyone already enrolled achieves.
"Something to help them do well in their performance? That would seem to me to be a laudable goal," he said.
The graduation rate for black students at Pitt has been slightly above the national average of approximately 40 percent. But being better than mediocre is not good enough, affirmative action committee Chairman Earl Hord said.
"Be creative," he told Pitt administrators.
The university has begun discussing ways it might boost success rates for minorities, from pairing the students with minority and other faculty who can take a special interest in them to mentoring and financial support programs.
There are about 25,000 students on Pitt's Oakland campus enrolled in a variety of schools, from arts and sciences to professional schools such as business, law, engineering and education. Black students make up about 10 percent of the undergraduate population.
The schools annually submit $250 million in budget requests. In recent years, Pitt has begun tying program plans for each of those schools to the budget discussions. This year, for the first time, plans to boost graduation rates and grade point averages for minorities will be included in those plans.
Each school knows that the university can opt to take back as much as 5 percent of its budget for high priority projects elsewhere on campus. But if the school's plan - and starting this year that includes minority goals - is suitable, it knows that no more than 2.5 percent of its budget can be taken.
If their plans are not viable, said Maher, a larger chunk of their budget could be lost.
"I have found that just being able to discuss the plans and the budgets together with the schools is very effective and that it's not in general necessary to take punitive measures," he said.
"They respond. They know there could be punitive measures and that is enough."
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