Is Temple No Longer ‘Diversity University’?
TEASER:
As the GPA and SAT scores of incoming freshmen has risen, the percentage of Black students enrolled at Temple has declined. On the other hand, the retention and graduation rates of Black students are as high as ever. Has Temple really abandoned its mission?
http://diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_8772.shtml
July 25th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Mr. Benner’s story was disappointing. First, he wrote a long story about minority student enrollment at Temple University without seeking to contact me. I remain on the faculty at Temple and have a readily available telephone number and email address on the Temple website.
Second, Mr. Benner says that the enrollment of African American students declined during my service at president. It did not. The number of African American students was approximately the same or perhaps a bit higher when I left the presidency in 2006 than when I became president in 2000. It is true that the percentage–not the number–of African American students declined. This was because of a very large surge of applications from cities, towns, and rural areas across Pennsylvania, where there are relatively few minority students going to school. Mr. Benner should have noted that Temple is a public university, and we take seriously our responsibility to provide educational opporunity for as many qualified students as possible. The number of white applicants rose dramatically in recent years, while the number of African American applicants did not.
I was pleased that Mr. Benner did include at the end of his story a statement from Temple pointing out that the University ranks among the top ten in the United States in the number of bachelors degrees awarded to African American students. To suggest that such an institution is somehow falling short in its commitment to minority education has a ring of unreality.