join the c-span conversation. like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. now a discussion about the difficulties minorities face getting a college degree. it is part of an event hosted by the ucla civil rights project. this is 40 minutes. we start with our main message of the paper which is this college completion is not just a post secondary issue. the data we use out of a state administrative database in texas to track students from kindergarten to graduate school. what we find is what contributes to the gap in college completion by race actually much of that happens before the student ever enrolls in college. two problems or two issues frame the texas college success or

lack of success in texas. the first is growing latino demography. latinos compromise majority of all public school students. the problem is not the demography but the growth in high school graduates is not translating to enrollment in colleges and universities. with black students it is a slightly different story. we have seen an increase in enrollment for the black population. that is worth praising but this enrollment has not translated into completion. it is a very clear example of how success on one side of the pipeline does not translate to the other side. instead we see that from my analysis in the previous paper said black students are going to community colleges as a first choice institution which is likely to decrease odds of

college completion. there is a racial achievement gap. you see six-year completion rate is difference between white and hispanic students is 13.1 -- 14.1%. with black and white students 21.9 percentage points between white and black students. we then start to examine students who enroll in a four year college what is the racial and ethnic composition and key factors that influence college completion. we present economic disadvantage, academic preparation and percent minority. black and latino students are much more likely to be economically disadvantaged and hispanics represent the group with highest disadvantage. we use trigonometry which is

signal for college completion. look at the difference between black and white students who take trigonometry. 23 percentage points to big problems in academic preparation. in terms of minorities in high school we know that racially segregated environments are much less likely to increase student achievement than integrated environments. we see white students attend a high school where there are only 32% black and skand latino stud with hispanics compromising groups attending most -- what contributes to the college completion gap what we call racial completion gap by precollege characteristics and post secondary factors? we use literature in the data set to guide the analysis. the precollege factors i can talk in more detail for questions of what they are.

they represent individual characteristics, high school context choices in curriculum. post secondary factors you can imagine institutional resources. we use a nonlinear variance decomposition method where the differences in the probability of college completion were represented by precollege and post secondary institutional characteristics. we explained approximately 94% of the model. next slide. this is what we find. there are large differences between precollege and post secondary factors. we find precollege characteristics 61% of total variance in explaining for both hispanic and black students as compared to white student counter parts. that is more than half of the completion gap is explained by precollege kwarkte echaracteris we then sought to explain the

gap. next slide. i won't spend too much time on this slide. what we see here is the different factors, economic, academic preparation, high school context and that compared to post secondary factors. what we see here, the lesson is that for hispanic students economic disadvantage seems to be driving the gap. whereas with black and white students academic factors is driving the gap in college completion by race. this signals a different precollege factors may befluencing. it signals the role of finances for latinos. while finances matter for black students academic population represents the greatest gap. much of our work included the role of msis. a diverse landscape of hsis. our previous work -- not yet, it

is a surprise. our previous work looked at graduation rates of hispanic and black students at smis compared to nonsmis. this paper is different. it compares black and hispanic graduation rates to white students. so we are going to see a different outcome. next slide, please. our results for this question using the decomposition method indicate there is a negative contribution of the msi in post secondary factors explaining gap in college completion. this is important and alarming. msi's under rating system are likely to show that they are negative lly contributing to graduation when many factors may have occurred well before enrollment. for this cohort we see 12.9% of total variance explained alone 37% of the post secondary

context is by hsi status. the contribution is 9%. 28% is explained by hbc status. these are 2002 numbers. previous cohorts show that hsi's negative contributions has lessened. the analysis doesn't [ inaudible ] as the identity and mission of implementation are difficult to capture in our data set. however, a critical problem is illuminated when we compare graduation rates to that of white students who have more advantages, resources and choices in post secondary institutions, not only texas but nationally. so what can we learn from these analysis if we are to move forward? did you show the -- show the msi slide. you already did. what can we learn from the analysis if we are to move forward with a national college

rating system? to be clear our paper does not suggest that we are against accountability or there is no place for accountability. we recommend there be much more likelihoods of outcomes of educational circumstances that are not likely to change before the ratings system was put in place. as such we leave with you the following recommendations. again, college completion is not just a post secondary student. failing to account for this result would penalize institutions enrolling large numbers of minority students. finally, given the role of economic disadvantage and academic preparation in explaining the gap, policy intervenges aimed at financial aid and developmental education are warranted. and really finally, the use of vaerd and innovative data systems to disentangle where the odds of completion are most challenged is highly

recommended. what we mean by this is that the ncs has wonderful data sets that are useful in understanding gaps in racial achievement gaps in college completion gaps but there are state databases that can also inform this question much better than our federal data sets. so we recommend some form of partnership in which we get the best data to get the best research to form the best policy results that we can in this day and age. thank you. >> thank you, professor flores. now we're going to turn to marybeth gasman. >> good morning, everyone. thank you to everyone for coming, and thanks to all the sponsors and gary as well. so this paper was written by myself and two of my research assistants, ty quinn and an undergraduate student named danny corelle. what we tried to do in our paper was provide a landscape of the nation's msis, institutions that

educate 20% of our college students. oftentimes people forget that. so these institutions, as we know and as most people have been saying today, have a proven track record with first generation students, low-income students and students of color. if you could flick the slide, please. so this will just give you a few numbers that give you an idea of what's going on in the msi landscape. one thing i want to point to is the pell grant percentage. 50% of students at msis are utilizing the pell grant, which is really important. msis are known for their family-like environments, they're known for success in developmental education even though developmental education gets kicked around a bit. there are many examples of msis of their success and they're empowering to people of color. so msis are deeply vulnerable

because of their financial situations as some of the presenters have explained and also due to the risks that they take. sara talked about this extensively as did some of the other presenters. the risks that they take in enrolling many of the students that other institutions don't enroll. and these risks result in unveen outcomes for msis. what we do in our paper is we urge policymakers to examine the unique contribution of msis especially in three critical areas that i want to highlight. so you can go to the next slide. right. so one of the things that i noticed recently when i was reading the my brother's keeper report issued by the obama administration is that there was only one line related to minor serving institutions in the entire report. and msis were pretty much left out of the report. so what i want you to do is just look for a minute at the role that msis are playing in

educating men of color. so 36% of men of color with full-time enrollment are enrolled at msis. if you look a little bit deeper, you can see the percentages across the various racial and ethnic groups that are enrolled full time at msis. then if you look at the part-time enrollment, nearly 50%, 48.6% of men of color with part-time enrollment are at msis. if you start to look at the awarding of bachelor's degrees you see that 24% of all the bachelor's degrees to men of color come from msis and 22% of all the oeassociate's degrees t men of color, but they only ended up with one line in the my brother's keeper report. so we found that problematic, and we really want to point to the contributions that msis are making with men of color. next slide. another area that we pay

particular attention to is teacher education. and another thing that we've been hearing, especially from the department of education under this administration is an emphasis on the need for an increase in teachers, especially teachers of color. and how important that diversity is to young students of color. so one of the thins that we've noticed is that msis are doing -- are making considerable contributions in teacher education. the bulk of these degrees are due to hispanic-serving institutions, and that's important to point out, but we do want to also point out the conferral of degrees by msis in the teacher education area. and we also in the paper talk about the fact that many of the teachers that are educated at msis end up going back to the communities from which they came. so they go back to urban and rural communities and msis are

collecting data on those teachers who go back to those communities. and those are communities that have high concentrations of students of color. next slide. another thing that we talk about in the paper is the contributions of msis in the s.t.e.m. area. our nation is said to need 1 million s.t.e.m. workers and we need much more diversity in the area of s.t.e.m. we know -- there have been countless papers. sylvia hurtado here has done work in this area as well. that shows us that many msis are doing a disproportionate job in the s.t.e.m. area. we don't know exactly what they do and my project is working on things related to that. but we point out these contributions that they are making in the area of s.t.e.m. and what i want to stress here is for us, these are three critical areas that are being talked about widely across the country.

right? we hear a lot about the shortages of teachers, how can we make teaching a career that more people want to get into. we hear much about men of color, especially right now. and we also hear about our great needs in the area of s.t.e.m. what we'd like to urge people to do is when they're thinking about how institutions are funded, to think about how msis contribute in these critical areas. and so we had a variety of recommendations for policymakers. so i'm just going to go over three. and these include -- so for policymak policymaker, one of the things that i think we find most disturbing is the way that msis are left out of discussions. and how their contributions are not included in major national reports and discussions. and we see this over and over. even though there are many, many people in this room who try adamantly to get the -- these discussions -- the contributions of msis into these national

discussions. so what we say is that we don't think that these national reports should be issued or that legislation should be put forward if msis are not part of that discussion. we also recommend for msis that institutions not only larger, overreaching organizations, which are already doing this, but institutions work together in coalitions across the various msi sectors. and this can easily be done within states. it can also be done in a variety of other ways, institutions that have similar programs, similar curricular issues, similar financing. we urge msis to work together because in silos their strength is really zapped. but when you have nearly 600 msis in the country and they're educating 20% of college and university students, you have a lot more strength. then another thing that we recommend for researchers and policymakers is to focus on what

works and what's successful. so a long time ago when i was a brand new professor, my mentor was asa hilliard. i'm a child psychologist. he passed away a few years ago. but one of the things he told me was, you know, we really know what works, but we just don't pay attention. and i believe that. and i think that one of the things that msis can show us is what works with low-income students of color and first generation students. we have many, many examples of what's successful, and i think that we should look to msis for how to be more successful rather than the way that we tend to approach msis which is to see what we can do for them. i think that we should look at msis and see what they can teach the rest of the nation. thank you. >> thank you very much. first i turn for a response to

deborah santiago from exlens ya, one of our partners. >> can everyone hear me? yeah. thank everyone for all the hard work in putting this together. i want to frame my responses to stella's piece specifically with more of a policy lens. i think what her paper and her colleagues have done is twofold. one, acknowledge what we in public policy know, that the train has left the station on the issue of accountability. we're not going to get away with just saying we're different, we have a mass of students that have additional needs so don't hold us accountable. none of us want that. and the second part what i appreciated they put together was looking at how do we identify a fair assessment and valuation of students that have a critical mass enrolled. that becomes a challenge figuring how do we take the good

analysis done and operationalize it in a manner in public policy where we prioritize simplicity over accuracy? and we all have a certain measure of adhd in terms of what our priorities are in the moment, and if we can't put it in a bullet, if we can't make it concise, then it's a difficult thing to implement. and that's the kind of pragmatism we do in trying to translate really good research into public policy. so i was thinking a lot about it. i wanted to push the researchers a little bit, but also add -- >> we shouldn't enact soundbites? >> yes, i will. i have five minutes, right? three minutes now. so yes, simplicity accuracy scale. what if we took the existing information and data that's being bandied about in d.c. and other places and try to weight it by the issues that are raised in the paper that stella put together? the reality is we don't want two

different forms of accountability. that's not the way to approach this. we have to approach it in a manner that doesn't let the institutions off the hook either for enrolling a high concentration of students that have income needs and have college readiness needs overall. so how do we make sure that to stella and her team's point, we create a fair system. so how about if we took a look and so i'll offer this as a suggestion, with the data recurrently collect, ways to weight what is in some ways a relatively perverse way of looking at institutional efforts at hsis and pscus. what we made sure that completion rates -- not graduation rates, completion rates -- add information on part time and transfer students. that's not included and so many of these students have a high concentration of low income needy students and aren't given the credit for what they're doing with transfers and part-timers. national clearinghouse has data

on this. there are ways that we have to focus on from a public policy perspective to collect the data to make sure that happens. what if we looked at financial aid, which is paper race is critical for latinos but the economic disadvantage is a factor and we weighted what we put together in an accountability system by the percent of students that are receiving pell or financial aid? we took a look at the college and structures and what kind of quality is provided and weight it based on that? for college readiness, critical for african-americans and those at hpcus we look at the percent remediation, the percent that are retained and those who drop out as factors. that doesn't mean only for these institutions, but i can assure you that look at these factors, multiple measures, we'll get a more balanced approach. perfect ? no, that doesn't really exist. we owe it to these students of

institutions who have taken on the challenge of jukding to those of most need to make sure they get the quality of education they deserve and our workforce overall. these are all data that are currently collected, not perfect but they are collected. and the last is that, we do collect information on institutions that have a high enrollment of needy students and low general expenditures. there's a way to the financial component of these institutions in a way i don't think we're thinking significantly about that can address accountability. what we can't do is let the k-12 system off the hook, we can't let institutions of higher education off the hook and say because we have students of need that we lower expectations of the students or the institutions that enroll them. >> thank you very much. we'll turn now to my you can la colleague sylvia hurtado. >> thank you. i'm commenting on marybeth gasman's paper and her colleagues. if you haven't read the paper, you should read it. if you do not know very much

about the different minority-serving institutions, it's a good, easy, fast, descriptive analysis of what mint-serving institutions are. and more importantly, i think, the focus of diversification in the workforce in areas of national importance are a key in terms of really having all that data in one place. it's a great paper in that regard. i want to say also that they really focused on key national areas of importance, that teacher education, s.t.e.m. degrees which we know for individuals, that's where the highest paying jobs are going to be in the future. and also that's what we already nationally have indicated is going to be a key area for enhancing american competitiveness. then the issue of minority males. in all those instances, the data in this paper show that if there are anything to impact either

the financing of these institutions or the financing of their students, that we would see serious and drops in terms of the representation of various minorities, low income and first generation students and teacher education, in s.t.e.m. and, of course, in the completion rates of minority males. i think the important pieces that she also brings into the paper are first that the stories of mint-serving institutions are still not entirely evident to the nation and, in fact, we still have to educate publishers and editors about what these are. all the time we try to put some of our publications out. and so sometimes are left out of the discussion, as she well points out in terms of national reports. though they can be severely impacted by any decisions that are made nationally. one of the things that i think probably we need to talk more about is understanding the research capacity of these

institutions because i think both marybeth, myself and several of us on this panel have been really looking at minority-serving institutions and trying to really tell the story, but i think really each institution also has to help develop its own research capacity in the way early in the earlier session dillard began to show how they were doing their own studies. our work with the institutions has indicated that very often they don't have the institutional research staff, the data are very hard to gather in particularly tribal colleges have a huge deficit in terms of being able to pull together the resources to not only report the data but also do and monitor and track the students. this is very important because it points to an institutional research issue. second, i think the paper really shows an important point in terms of the accomplishments are evident even with fewer resources these institutions are doing something for the nation. and i think i value, for

example, for first time i've seen the contributions of two-year institutions that are minority-serving institutions documented in this particular paper, and i thank you for doing that analysis. the third point -- and it's sort of something obscured in the paper and i want you to talk a little bit more about -- is diversity should be part of the metric. i think that's what deborah santiago was beginning to say, how do you incorporate that into the metric? one size fits all is not going to result because challenges are different for these institutions, their resources are different and also they are still making contributions. so i want to kind of open it up, if we could speak more about how diversity might be part of a metric, a national rating system, and deborah's talked about a possible rating component, but also that the notion of social equity and diversity has to be a consideration in all of this. >> thank you very much, sylvia. now, there are three microphones up here in the front.

please come up right away. we rushed everybody along to save time for your questions. go right ahead. >> good morning. thanks so much to the panelists. i'm in rau awe of the research presented today. my name is robin liam from higher ed consultancy. with the competing interests that higher ed has now regard to enrollment, needing to enroll a lot of international students, out of state students et cetera per se regarding funding, how might the focus stay on closing the racial college completion gaps at msis and hsis? >> stella? >> so, i think that's a very good question you know, my perspective comes from not only looking at the post secondary sector, so again, the part of what comprises a racial completion gap is not only what happens at the institution. and so this doesn't preclude us

from enrolling more students from other countries but again i'm going to keep pushing if we talk about the racial completion gap it's not just what's occurring at the institution. so this idea that the high schools in particular, k through 12 can be let off the hook so more collaboration, more conversations of if we're going to keep our graduation rates up, this is not a conversation that should only stay within higher ed. >> yes, can i just respond to that, too? look, we make choices every day, right? and institutions of higher ed, because they're getting less public support, are having to find means. they have to enroll international and out of state students to make the bottom line. and does that squeeze out the very time latinos and african-americans are becoming the majority in the clebollege population? i think so. the reality is it doesn't have to be that way. we're making those choices

because of expediency and facility and reaching back to our core as to why we are institutions and what it is we do is i think primary for us to consider who it is enrolling, why we're doing so and then why are we holding institutions accountable if we're going through a process that the students that we haven't educated in our system. that's not to say we sthoont enroll international or out of state students but the reality is if we're putting primacy to the bottom line financially and not who we're serving and finding that balance the new way, then i don't think we're doing a service as public institutions. >> you know, at our campus at ucla, we get less than 10% of our budget from the state of california. so this year there will be 30% of students from outside california on our campus, which is basically a survival strategy, but if we had a higher education act that gave recognition -- because we have a very high level of pell grants

and there's a lot of diversity on our campus, it would give universities a different incentive if they were given an additional recognition or funding as a result of those kinds of enrollments rather than being punished for them by cutting their budgets. >> thank you. >> hi, dora from the american dental education association. my question is for marybeth gasman. thank you, first of all, for the slides because that's primarily our interest. when it comes to msis on your own website you distinguish between hbcus. i understand it's not the same at hpcus, are they being left out when you're giving statistics about black students at hpcus, that they should or

should not be include? >> they are differently entities than predominantly black institutions. if you're doing research on historically black institutions which are created with the idea of educating black americans prior to 1965, right? that research is typically not going to include pbis unless you include them. for our center, we do pay attention to pbis, but if our research is on hbcus -- like we have a big s.t.e.m. project that is funded by the helmsley trust. one thing i would say there is the outcomes in s.t.e.m. for pbis are different than for hbcus. they're just two dirt pots.

leslie leads an organization that represents both. i do think that pbis need attention because they're growing in similar ways, not in the same way but similar ways to hsis, but they're two different groups. pbis used to be majority institutions, some even have separate alumni groups. so they're just very different. but we want to do research related to both kinds of institutions, but i would say that pbis get a lot less attention. >> so there's a lot less research on pbis? >> a lot less research. there's hardly any research on pbis. >> any of you out there looking for a good dissertation? >> you know, one thing i would say is they're very frustrated by that, too. i often have presidents of pbis that call and say, why doesn't anyone care about our

institutions? why doesn't anybody want to do research related to our institutions? so it is a ripe area and they're looking for attention. >> yes. >> hi, andress enriquez with the national science foundation. i'm still formulating my question. but two things first. i'm delighted that the workforce issue came up, particularly the issues around s.t.e.m. and my question is for stella and for deborah. we have this huge policy shift taking place in the k through 12 area of schools which is called a common core in the next generation science standards and the analytics on that in terms of minority students and in particular english language learners is that the number of dropouts is going to increase significantly. and those that are prepared for college is going to really

shift. and i'm wondering in terms of the precollege piece what can we do to -- we know some of those issues in terms of identifying youngsters who are going to be struggling getting into college from the work. and i'm wondering what we can do. and deborah, i'm wondering if the data points or the analytics that you're thinking about in terms of the data set that you need should not start in college but way beforehand, if that makes sense. >> so i think you bring up some very good points. let me start with this idea of access to -- i'm kind of reframing your question -- to rigorous courses and ell students. we actually use this database to look at the success of ell students their college access and we found something very

important. and that relates to the timing in the ell program. and we found that latino students who participate in the ell program for three years are actually likely to do better than latino students who waivered out of any program participation although qualified to it. so what we're seeing in texas is that some program participation for ell students does not hinder their college access rates but more than that leads them down a different path. and the biggest point of mobility here for those students and this translates for other groups is access to the rigorous course work in high school. so how common core will play out? texas is a different story with common core. but we do know that rigor matters and we know that ell students are not likely to have access to those courses -- we've

got reframe ell as not just exiting the program and learning english and entrance into the rigorous course work. >> i'll take the second half. the second half of the question since i think stella did a good job answering the first part. in the paper, there is a clear reference to looking at k-20 databases and that's what the data are based on so that they presided in their analysis. that reinforces your point about the data overall. i would say that while not identical, those data points i raised are collected in some manner in k-12 as opposed to pell, we have students participating in free and reduced lunch, that's kind of our basic proxy at the federal level for income level. we do have ways in k-12 to track it. we don't see variance on the very things in the paper that stella raised and others are we

don't see great changes in economic mobility at the k-12 level and that's often where we look in financial aid and say you can, you know, apply and have a year waiting and you won't see big differences. so the challenge becomes how do we create public policy that intervenes given the date that we currently have? i think the data are there. we're not using them and making sure whether it's at the k-12 or higher ed level, we're waitieig for these populations. we have to do is better job. >> while the gap is still big, it was frankly i was surprised not as big as i thought it would be. the biggest gap of concern in academic preparation and this will translate to however common core ticks out, is the there's something happening in schools where la tebows may be getting more access to rigorous core work and that's one of the biggest differences that we see in racial participation and

rigorous course work. >> thank you very much. very good question. i'll just take a second at the end to say, some of this panel relates to other work that we're doing. let me take your question, if it's a quick one. >> yes, thank you so much. janelle george with the naacp educational fund. i have a quick question for ms. santiago in terms of assessment. i understand your point and looking more towards weights different factors, how would you factor in and weight the preparation k through 12 lack of preparation or remediation issues with minority-serving institutions? and if i can sneak in one last question to ms. gasman, if you can talk about the impact of minority-serving institutions on women of color as well as men of color? thank you. >> sure. so i'll try to be fast so you can get in there, too.

how we weight the preparation college readiness, so things that i identified, so there is a statistical approach. we do it with a lot of ncs date to to weight the data that's out there. i won't get into the complicated part of that. we do have elements in what percent of students in an institution are taking remediation. we know that. that's a proxy at the college level for academic preparation at the k-12 level. we can do something with that. that's something i would definitely weight. the concentration of students that don't complete what we call the gateway courses, the 101 courses, that's clear. we know those data. we should be able to use them, and looking at what institutions are doing. if you have a high concentration of latin americans and latinos that don't get through, thats that to be weighted when you're looking for completion. completion is the goal, enrollment is the necessary component. you can't complete if you haven't enrolled but looking at the profile of the students that

are enrolling has to be weighted by the concentration of the students that have financial needs whether financial or academic. >> in this paper we did focus on men of color because we did try to focus on three critical areas that the nation is calling on right now. in a previous paper i wrote with valerie lundy wagner at columbia, and is one of my former students, we wrote a paper that looks at the gains of women of color. it's specifically at black colleges. i haven't looked at that across all msis, but at black colleges, if i were to be completely frank, the success of black colleges is due to women of color. i mean, to black women. i mean, the success is much higher with regard to black women. it's especially high in the area of s.t.e.m. they're making really, really great contributions in that area. so i haven't looked across all msis. it would be a great thing to do.

we definitely have that data and could look at that, but that's a really good question. >> i would like to add in our analyses in texas, black males disproportionately, overwhelmingly choose to go to an hbcu over white -- over white -- over black females. so while the stories of black women obviously need to be present in the conversation, the hot spots of where black males are attending college at least in texas, they overwhelmingly choose an hbcu. >> i just wanted to take a minute at the end before we thang the panel to just comment that you can find on our website of the civil rights project a lot of relevant studies that relate to precollege preparation. we've shown in our recent study of california, for example, segregating california's future that latinos used to be in

predominantly white schools in california. they're now in 86% non-white schools, 75% poverty. african-americans are in very similar situations but most likely as minorities within latino schools. these schools have much less availability of qualified teachers with experience especially in mathematics and science. they are very unstable schools in terms of enrollment in many cases. these are coschools that are systematically segregated and unequal. if we take those students into colleges that are ril wiling to take a chance on them and then punish the colleges that take them, we'd be making one crisis into another and cutting off mobility in a very serious way. so it's very important that we thing about all of these things simultaneously. i know it's hard in an environment of sound bites to do that. but it's essential that we keep

those things in our mind. so now after these two intense panels, let me thank this panel very much for a very illuminating discussion. >> friday a discussion about efforts in middle eastern countries to recover national assets stolen by former government officials. experts will be at the center for strategic and international studies. live coverage begins at 9:00 eastern here on c-span3. >> be part of c-span's campaign 2014 coverage. follow us on twitter and like us on facebook. to get debate schedules, video clips of key moments, debate previews from our politics team. c-span is bringing you over 100 senate, house and governor debates. you can instantly share your reactions to what the candidates are saying. the battle for control of congress. stay in touch and engaged by following us on twitter, at

c-span and liking us on facebook at facebook.com/cspan. now more from the ucla civil rights project conference on minorities in higher education. in this session university officials discuss the latest studies on the topic including how perspective students are evaluated by the admissions process. this is an hour and ten minutes. >> okay. well, i hope you're all refreshed and ready for an intense final panel here. so we're going to have three presenters on this panel. sylvia hurtado, who you met before, nicholas hillman, ann-marie nunez. why don't we start at the end and put ann up first.