A new initiative posed by an organization of public university leaders will aim to cut the socio-economic and racial education "achievement gap" in half by the year 2015.
The University System of Maryland will participate in The National Association of System Heads' (NASH) new program, but as a private university, Hopkins cannot directly participate in this initiative. Instead the University has been working to create its own system to narrow, and eventually eliminate, the same gap.
It is "our responsibility," NASH Staff Officer Janis Somerville said, to close the achievement gap. NASH's initiative supports the attitude that equal educational opportunities for people from all backgrounds must be put forth in the interest of everyone, not just people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The achievement gap refers to the difference between the educational advancement of students from low-income families versus students from economically privileged backgrounds. NASH's statistics showed that only nine percent of students from low-income families earn a bachelor's degree by the age of 24, while 75 percent of economically privileged students do.
"We are supposed to be the land of opportunity and always moving forward. By not closing this gap, we are belying our heritage," said chancellor of the University System of Maryland William Kirwan. He is the system head for all public universities in Maryland except Morgan State University.
Yesterday the University of Baltimore held an all-day Closing the Achievement Gap conference.
Kirwan spoke hopefully about the conference, which was attended by representatives from the private sector as well as all grades in primary schools, as a forum for launching some state-wide initiatives to close the achievement gap.
Kirwan mentioned a specific initiative in private universities as well as public ones to award more full scholarships to students from low-income families (defined as families whose net income is less than $40,000 per year).
There is active recruitment on a system-wide and institution-wide level for minorities, which distributes quite a bit of financial aid.
A prominent example is the Meyerhoff Scholars Program at UMBC, which gives minority students studying in the sciences full scholarships.
The program boasts a 90 percent graduation level and produces the largest number of black students in the nation who go on to get MDs and Ph.Ds.
Public universities in Maryland track the success rate of all minority students and survey graduates to see how they are doing.
Kirwan pointed out two main reasons for being concerned with the gap, which he said has "grown enormously."
"We are in an era where getting a college education is almost a requirement for a good job and high quality of life. A high school education used to be enough to live securely, but that is not the case anymore," Kirwan said.
The achievement gap also refers to the typically lower education of under-represented racial minorities.
The same group of statistics showed that 18 percent of black students and 11 percent of Hispanic students earn bachelor's degrees by the age of twenty-four, while 34 percent of white students do.
"We are keenly aware of the financial access issue," said Dean of Enrollment and Academic Services William Conley. Conley is in charge of the Baltimore Scholars Program, one of the University's attempts to narrow the achievement gap.
He describes Baltimore Scholars as a "higher education access program," targeted not to any specific group but to recruiting students in Baltimore from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and giving them full-tuition scholarships.
Traditionally, Hopkins had only received applications from 30 to 40 applicants from Baltimore city public schools each year, out of whom an average of five students actually enrolled.
Conley was troubled by these numbers, which implied that most Baltimore students either do not think they can get in to Hopkins, or do not think resources exist for them to be able to go even if they are accepted.
Out of this concern came the Baltimore Scholars Program, which has been running for the past three years. Enrollment from the Baltimore area has increased since then, with 120 to 135 applications per year and about 20 enrolling.
This rate has now reached a plateau, Conley said, because the University "needs to have a broader pipeline."
According to Conley, the process of getting ready for an education at as prestigious a university as Hopkins needs to start for disadvantaged students, whether from Baltimore or from anywhere else in the United States, at an earlier level.
He cited the Center for Talented Youth (CTY) as a good resource for students to get to know Hopkins and see that "they too could make it there one day."
Despite their success, CTY and Baltimore Scholars Program have not caused a rapid turnover in education statistics.
"The channel's still not wide enough," Conley said. He said that the answer lies in spreading the word about opportunities.
"What we really need to do is open this campus to Baltimore City kids who can come here and talk to college kids and see 'you can get here,' even if it's a different prestigious university they decide to go to and not Hopkins," he said.
CTY Communications Coordinator Matt Bowden cited the Next Generation Venture Fund as another way of recruiting students from all over the United States, not just in Baltimore, to an environment where they can learn and excel and get ready to attend a prestigious college.
Many of the students who attend CTY are from "economically depressed backgrounds and under-represented ethnic backgrounds," Bowden said.
"While we do not have such a targeted financial aid program [as the Baltimore Scholars Program] for other urban areas, we actively recruit underrepresented students from around the country," Conley said.
"We provide transportation and housing costs for economically disadvantaged students so they can attend one of our on-campus programs."
Conley said that the University supports diversity in the undergraduate student body so that students learn from each other and better understand different backgrounds from their own.
Conley hoped for a more diverse student population, especially socio-economically, in the years to come, and for programs like the Baltimore Scholars Program to become endowed programs.
He hoped that neighborhoods in Baltimore will prepare students to come to Hopkins and other leading American universities, because the ones who do come are often from magnet schools and already have an advantage from their public education.
"We've had a commitment for decades to try to diversify undergraduate recruitment at Hopkins," Conley said.
"We are all trying to raise the aspiration level of students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds."
Lena Harris, a freshman psychology major, is a Baltimore Scholar. She found out about the program when she was in high school and decided to come because of the University's prestige and the strength of the psychology department.
Harris said that her adjustment felt difficult at first when she got to Hopkins, but that Baltimore Scholars Night, which honored her and the other Scholars, helped her feel welcome.
She said that Hopkins did not seem to make quite as much of an effort as some schools do to recruit students in general. Once she arrived, however, Harris felt the University made her feel that she and other students of color were welcome.
"Students are very nice and everyone's willing to help you - in the places where the University faltered, the student body picked up. If I felt stranded because nothing have to do with Baltimore Scholars was happening for a while, BSU came right in to help," she said.
The Black Student Union (BSU) was also cited by other freshmen as a major welcoming force upon arriving at Hopkins.
"I knew there was a strong black community here," freshman cognitive science and Spanish major Mikki Lambert said.
She came for Discovery Days and liked the sense of community, which she said was reinforced by the presence of cultural groups on campus like BSU and events like the Student Success Series (SSS), held for multicultural students before the fall term.
Lambert said that most of the schools she applied to were of the same level as Hopkins as far as the number of wealthy white students they attract, so she did not fear being in the minority.
She said Hopkins made a better effort than many colleges she applied to in making students of underrepresented minorities feel welcome.
"They have pretty much something for everybody," freshman chemical and biomolecular engineering major Angela Brown said. She felt that the SSS made her feel welcome, and she likes being part of the National Society of Black Engineers, which takes engineers on trips to meet employers and holds other activities.
However, Brown was not fond of Colors at Hopkins or Discovery Days, which she said gave a more positive perception of racial unity at Hopkins than is the case.
"They kind of gave you a fake view," said freshman chemical and biomolecular engineering major Luwam Gebrekristos.
She thought the overwhelming diversity she saw at Discovery Days was overshadowed by the rest of the school's population when she arrived in the fall.
Gebrekristos came from a high school with about a half-white, half-minority ratio, so she is adjusting to the ratio at Hopkins.
