Retention rates at SMU are lower among African-American students. (Michael Danser/ The Daily Campus )

“I came to SMU because of the low demographics,” SMU sophomore Courtney Kelly said, “–to prove that it can be done.”

Courtney is one of the 275 black and/or African American undergraduate students enrolled at SMU, according to the headcount charts on the registrar’s page of SMU’s website. With 5,950 students enrolled in undergraduate programs, 4,262 of them are white: that’s 71.6 percent.

Black and African American students are not, however, the only ethnic group with low numbers on the Hilltop. Minority undergraduates represent 28.4 percent  of the SMU undergrad population, 21.4 percent  if you exclude international students.

According to Anthony Tillman, assistant provost for strategic initiatives and director of student retention, all post-secondary institutions are required to give their retention and enrollment figures, among other things, to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) then publishes these rates in a public, user-friendly format.

According to its website, “the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the U.S. and other nations. NCES is located within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences.”

Tillman said that schools are only required to publish their figures for six years, not four, so many don’t share their four-year figures.

The graduation rates of different ethnic groups at SMU are generally close to each other: except for the black and African American cohort.

Tillman says that it’s important qualitatively to remember the drastic difference in the number of minorities versus the majority.

However, he said, “Quantitatively, across the board, the retention rates for the majority of the student pop and the minority student population, there’s not much deviance in terms of basic standard deviations, with one exception—the retention rate compared to the majority for the African American students is one that does concern me.”

Texas Christian University and Baylor University are fairly comparable to SMU in numbers, retention and graduation rates, but Vanderbilt University and particularly Duke University have considerably higher numbers.

However, at every school, the ethnic group with the lowest graduation rate after 6 years was the African American cohort.

When it comes down to it, African American students are not being retained at the same level or percentage as some of the other minority groups at SMU.

“For other minorities, the retention rate is either at parody with the majority, or it exceeds the majority,” Tillman said. “The African American retention rate tends to be lower.”

What is keeping African Americans from progressing in the same way as the other minority groups?

SMU junior Linwood Fields, an African American SMU student who grew up in Oak Cliff, said that many African American students, and often minority students in general at SMU, feel like the only way they can relate to someone is if that person looks like them.

“When I came to SMU, I realized that there wasn’t a large population of AA students. In order for me to have a good experience on campus, I had to do things that I may not have been comfortable with­,” he said.

Tillman has witnessed the same thing, but he noted that the ethnic group ratios in the faculty and staff at SMU are very similar to those of the student body.

Putting himself in a student’s shoes, Tillman explained that “if I, as an African American student, feel or believe that the only way I can get help or assistance is by finding someone who looks like me for that help or assistance, I may find myself looking for a very long time.”

Tillman explained that everything works within a system. The trick to being successful is “to know the policies and protocols, and know how to maneuver through it.”

While many minority students experience a bit of a culture shock when they come to an institution like SMU, junior Laura Baez, who also grew up in Oak Cliff, feels that her experience at SMU has helped her see race and ethnicity in an entirely different light.

“My perspective has changed since I go here. When I was a freshman, I felt like I… not that I didn’t belong, but that I was distinctly different,” Baez said.

Now that Baez has been forced to interact with people from different ethnic backgrounds than her own, she has been able to see that race is not what defines a person.

It took SMU junior Mai Lyn Ngo about a year to get adjusted to the culture at SMU.
“I just don’t see why it had to take a year,” Ngo said.

“Every school is going to have its jerks, but there are a lot of really special people at SMU. But it did take awhile to find them,” she said. “I think that’s the same case for most people.”
Fields, Baez and Ngo all said that the best way for minorities to enjoy their experience at SMU is to get involved.

“In the past year we’ve taken an earnest look at what’s been going on with our minority cohort students and how they are experiencing SMU,” Tillman said.

He finds, however, that it’s hard to get any student to come in for help, whether for academic, financial, emotional or any other kind of help.

“I think the one of the steps that we as the administration, and as an institution, need to take is to be more aggressive, more assertive in our orientation programs,” Tillman said.
Tillman feels that information is empowering, and those students who can learn that “it doesn’t matter who is sitting behind the desk,” or what they look like, will effectively grow in SMU’s environment.

“When you leave SMU and go into the real world, you begin to expose yourself to a global community of characters who may not look like you,” he said. “It takes some courage on behalf of some students, and it takes some trust.”