Colleges look to boost minority enrollment
There is active recruitment on a system-wide and institution-wide level for minorities, which distributes quite a bit of financial aid.
A prominent example is the Meyerhoff Scholars Program at UMBC, which gives minority students studying in the sciences full scholarships.
The program boasts a 90 percent graduation level and produces the largest number of black students in the nation who go on to get MDs and Ph.Ds.
Public universities in Maryland track the success rate of all minority students and survey graduates to see how they are doing.
Kirwan pointed out two main reasons for being concerned with the gap, which he said has "grown enormously."
"We are in an era where getting a college education is almost a requirement for a good job and high quality of life. A high school education used to be enough to live securely, but that is not the case anymore," Kirwan said.
The achievement gap also refers to the typically lower education of under-represented racial minorities.
The same group of statistics showed that 18 percent of black students and 11 percent of Hispanic students earn bachelor's degrees by the age of twenty-four, while 34 percent of white students do.
"We are keenly aware of the financial access issue," said Dean of Enrollment and Academic Services William Conley. Conley is in charge of the Baltimore Scholars Program, one of the University's attempts to narrow the achievement gap.
He describes Baltimore Scholars as a "higher education access program," targeted not to any specific group but to recruiting students in Baltimore from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and giving them full-tuition scholarships.
Traditionally, Hopkins had only received applications from 30 to 40 applicants from Baltimore city public schools each year, out of whom an average of five students actually enrolled.
Conley was troubled by these numbers, which implied that most Baltimore students either do not think they can get in to Hopkins, or do not think resources exist for them to be able to go even if they are accepted.
A prominent example is the Meyerhoff Scholars Program at UMBC, which gives minority students studying in the sciences full scholarships.
The program boasts a 90 percent graduation level and produces the largest number of black students in the nation who go on to get MDs and Ph.Ds.
Public universities in Maryland track the success rate of all minority students and survey graduates to see how they are doing.
Kirwan pointed out two main reasons for being concerned with the gap, which he said has "grown enormously."
"We are in an era where getting a college education is almost a requirement for a good job and high quality of life. A high school education used to be enough to live securely, but that is not the case anymore," Kirwan said.
The achievement gap also refers to the typically lower education of under-represented racial minorities.
The same group of statistics showed that 18 percent of black students and 11 percent of Hispanic students earn bachelor's degrees by the age of twenty-four, while 34 percent of white students do.
"We are keenly aware of the financial access issue," said Dean of Enrollment and Academic Services William Conley. Conley is in charge of the Baltimore Scholars Program, one of the University's attempts to narrow the achievement gap.
He describes Baltimore Scholars as a "higher education access program," targeted not to any specific group but to recruiting students in Baltimore from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and giving them full-tuition scholarships.
Traditionally, Hopkins had only received applications from 30 to 40 applicants from Baltimore city public schools each year, out of whom an average of five students actually enrolled.
Conley was troubled by these numbers, which implied that most Baltimore students either do not think they can get in to Hopkins, or do not think resources exist for them to be able to go even if they are accepted.
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