Aaron Olson is confident he’s ready for UW-Madison.
He graduated from Memorial High School last year with a 3.6 grade point average, scored a 28 on the ACT exam and did it all while being an athlete.
But University of Wisconsin-Madison officials continue to struggle to attract minority students like Olson, and even more importantly, to retain them through graduation.
The freshman enrollment of targeted minorities (meaning all of them except foreigners and Asians not connected to southeast Asia) increased from 254 in 1996 to 541 in 2006. Less than 58 percent of targeted minorities who started college in 2000 had graduated by 2006, however, compared to 79.2 percent of students overall.
So what is it that makes it hard for many minorities to succeed at UW-Madison.
One thought on “Does UW’s PEOPLE program help minorities succeed?”
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In asking the question “Does the PEOPLE program help minority students succeed?,” it seems that UW could answer that question by comparing the graduation rates of minority students in the PEOPLE program to the graduation rates of minority students who did not go through the program. That might be a better comparison group than looking at the graduation rates of majority students. Another possible comparison would be to see if these students are as successful as a matched group of white students. Both seem like questions that the UW should be asking of its data and should be able to determine fairly easily.