Ebony in the Ivory Tower: Examining Trends in the Socioeconomic Status, Achievement, and Self-Concept of Black, Male Freshmen

Abstract

Despite the educational challenges African American males face, there is a sizeable population successfully finishing high school and entering college. This study provides an overview of how a national sample of black male freshmen embodied the cognitive, social, and institutional factors related to college access between 1971 and 2004. Data reveal that black, male freshmen today have more affluent family backgrounds, better academic records, and greater confidence in their skills and abilities than their peers who entered college in earlier decades. Trends indicate that men with lower incomes, less confidence, and less ideal academic records are increasingly unlikely to be present on college campuses.

Kimberly A. Griffin is an assistant professor of Education at The Pennsylvania State University. Her interests focus on the experiences of underrepresented communities in higher education. She conducts work on a variety of topics, including black professors and their engagement in student interaction, the experiences and motivation patterns of high achieving African American students, and the influence of campus racial climate.

Uma M. Jayakumar is assistant professor of Organization and Leadership in the School of Education at the University of San Francisco. Her scholarship examines issues related to college access and the experiences of students of color at traditionally white institutions. She also studies the impact of racial diversity and campus climate on student and societal outcomes.

Malana M. Jones is the Bar Exam Coordinator at the University of La Verne College of Law.

Walter R. Allen is holder of the Allan Murray Cartter Chair in Higher Education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies in the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also a professor of both Education and Sociology. His research and teaching focus on family patterns, socialization and personality development, race and ethnic relations, African American males, health inequality, and higher education.

Notes

1. These complex causal patterns involve not only individual, family, and community factors but also socio-historical, political, economic, and racial factors.

2. For the purposes of this analysis, a student is considered African American or black if he or she marked “African American/Black” in response to the ethnicity question on the CIRP survey.

3. See Appendix A of The American Freshman: National Norms for Fall, 2004 (Sax, Hurtado, Lindholm, Astin, Korn, & Mahoney, 2004) for a full description of weighting procedures.

4. Trend data for the general population of students responding to the SIF over the time frame addressed by this study is available in The American Freshman: Thirty-Five Year Trends (Astin et al., 2002). The African American student trends, disaggregated by gender and institutional type, are available in Black Undergraduates from Bakke to Grutter: Freshman Status, Trends, and Prospects, 1971–2004 (Allen et al., 2005). Both reports can be purchased from the Higher Education Research Institute (http://www.heri.ucla.edu).

5. For the purposes of this report, low-income families do not have incomes in excess of 150% of the federally defined poverty level for a family of four for that given year (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2009).