Assessing students' higher education performance in minority and non-minority serving universities

Abstract

Quality of the offered higher education for the next generations plays an important role to shape the future of United States. To improve American society, it is needed to pay profound attention to higher education of racial/ethnic minorities and ensure that all students belonging to different races have access to adequate professional resources and could enhance their academic knowledge in a similar way. Therefore, the aim of this study is to assess the semester-based academic performance of minority students and compare their performance progress with non-minority educators. To achieve this objective, junior level students' academic performances based on their assignment, midterm, and final exam grades in “Construction Engineering” course in one Hispanic-serving university, one Historically Black College and University (HBCU), and one non-minority university were compared and statistically analyzed. To control the variability of instructor's teaching quality, the same course across all the three institutions were taught by the same professor in three consecutive semesters. To conduct this analysis, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test was utilized to compare the minority and non-minority students' initial and final class performance as well as their rate of progress in each institution. The results indicate that there is a significant difference between the minority and non-minority students' progress in their assignment and exam grades throughout the semester. It is also revealed that minority students' performance had a rapid change and considerable improvement towards the end of the semester. This study suggests that the initial lower performance of minority students could be caused by insufficient earlier resources. The findings of this research will guide the government to allocate resources among universities more efficiently and effectively.