The Impact of College Racial Composition on African American Students' Academic Self-Concept: A Replication and Extension

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to replicate and extend Cokley's (2000) study by comparing the academic self-concept of African American students in a historically Black college and university setting (HBCU) and a predominantly White college and university setting (PWCU). A total of 396 African American students completed the Academic Self-Concept Scale (Reynolds Ramirez, Magrina, & Allen, 1980) and a demographic questionnaire. Consistent with Cokley's (2000) study, grade point average was the best predictor of academic self-concept for students attending the PWCU while quality of student-faculty interaction was the best predictor of academic self-concept for students attending HBCUs. Implications for how student affairs professionals can assist African American students as well as faculty are discussed. As a new decade begins, student development researchers continue to be interested in understanding the characteristics of colleges and universities that impact the development of college students. Several characteristics of a college or university have drawn considerable attention by prominent student development researchers. These characteristics include: (a) the size of the college (i.e., student-teacher ratio), (b) whether the college is publicly or privately funded, (c) whether the college is a 2-year or 4-year institution, (d) the selectivity of the college as measured by grade point averages (GPA) and standardized test scores of incoming students, and (e) the predominant racial composition of the college. Of these five characteristics, the predominant racial composition of the college has been examined most often when investigating the influences on the psychosocial development of African American college students. For the purpose of this study, research that focuses on comparing institutions of differing racial composition on various indicators of psychosocial development will be referred to by the acronym CIRC (comparative institutional racial composition). For example, several studies have focused on how the racial or cultural identity of African American college students is impacted by attending a predominantly White college or university (PWCU) versus a historically Black college or university (HBCU). Allen (1985) found that African American students attending an HBCU possessed a higher cultural awareness and commitment. Similarly, Baldwin, Duncan, and Bell (1987) reported that African American students attending an HBCU demonstrated a higher African self-- consciousness than African American students attending a PWCU. To the contrary, in a replication of the Baldwin et al. study, Cheatham, Tomlinson, and Ward (1990) found that African American students attending a PWCU were higher in African self-consciousness than African American students attending an HBCU. Cheatham, Slaney, and Coleman (1990) found that there was no difference in racial identity between African American students attending HBCUs and PWCUs. In an attempt to explain these contradictory findings, Cokley (1999) conducted a study in which he found no differences in the importance of racial identity between African American students attending HBCUs and PWCUs, but did find significant differences in the types of racial ideology African American students developed in each environment. He found that African American students attending HBCUs endorsed a more Black Nationalist ideology than their counterparts at PWCUs, while African American students attending PWCUs endorsed more humanist and assimilationist ideologies compared to their counterparts at HBCUs. Why these CIRC studies generated conflicting results is not altogether clear and has not been explicitly addressed in the literature. Several factors are most likely responsible for this. The first and perhaps most obvious factor pertains to methodology. For example, it can be argued that the samples were different in some meaningful way-namely different college samples were used. …