College in Black and White: Campus Environment and Academic Achievement of African American Males

Abstract

Research on African American males in U.S. higher education is generally relegated to explorations of the quantitative indicators of enrollment and attrition. Correspondingly little is known about the qualitative experience of these men on the nation's college campuses. Given the potential impact school experiences have on social and economic consequences throughout the life course, how African American males cope with the stresses of these environments merits important consideration. Higher education settings provide a useful context to examine the influence of such factors on academic outcomes, both within and beyond the bounds of school. The view that campus environments influence the educational experiences of college students is a consistent thread throughout research on African Americans in higher education. Specifically, campus social environments have been related to differential educational outcomes for African American college students (Allen, 1991). Of particular importance has been the notion of institutional support and how it relates to academic achievement. While institutional support has been shown to have significant consequences for educational outcomes, little attention has been paid to the differential experiences of African American males in college. Research on the experience of African American students in higher education has concentrated primarily on two areas: (1) the differential experience of these students relative to White students, and (2) the differential effects of attending a predominantly White institution as opposed to an historically Black one. Very little work has focused on the variations in the gender experiences of higher education for African American students. The existing research generally focuses on the declining participation and increased attrition rates of African American males in higher education (Green & Wright, 1992), while paying scant attention to the qualitative aspects of these students' schooling experiences. HIGHER EDUCATION AND AFRICAN AMERICAN MALES Given the social and economic problems faced by African American males in the United States, their experiences in college have become major sources of concern and challenge for many institutions of higher education. African American males presently account for 3.5% of the total enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities; however, they are disproportionately represented among students who are forced to withdraw, those with relative lower academic performance, and those who have more negative college experiences (Allen, Epps, & Haniff, 1991; Fleming, 1984). Interestingly, an increase in the college enrollments of African American males occurred at the end of the 1980s. From fall 1980 through fall 1990, the college enrollment rate of Black males actually increased by 7%; however, more recent data show that the proportion of African American male high school graduates who actually enrolled in college dropped almost 5% from 1990 to 1992 (American Council on Education [ACE], 1994). Specifically, only 29.7% of Black males who graduated from high school in 1992 enrolled in an institution of higher education, compared to 32.2% in 1991 and 34.4% in 1990. While these data are informative, they often mask variations in the quality of the college educational experience for Black males. Increased educational opportunities for African Americans have occurred since desegregation policies changed the demographics of most higher education institutions. However, only four decades after these corrective reforms began, the nation is witnessing a distressing ebb in the tide of increased educational opportunity for African Americans. Paradoxically, this is occurring at a time when progress toward desegregation has wrought progressively sharper increases in the number of African American students attending predominantly White institutions such that these numbers currently surpass Black enrollment at predominantly Black institutions (American Council on Education, 1994; Anderson, 1984). …