Reach beyond numbers to encourage Black college enrollment

As the fall semester begins, college leaders are reviewing, assessing and dissecting the numbers to help enrollment and reduce declines. But Black students are experiencing an education crisis that you might miss if you look at them as a number in a spreadsheet.

Black students are real people, with real struggles and stories. I know because I was that student.

Access to education has historically been denied to Black Americans, creating an education crisis in Black communities. Black students are not attending or graduating college at the same rate as their white peers.

Black enrollment in Illinois colleges and universities fell nearly 30% between 2013 and 2018. Overall enrollment dropped roughly 16% over the same period, with Black students making up a declining portion of the total student population.

Early reports from 2020 show a slight 0.6% increase in Black student enrollment in Illinois public universities. However, the Black students who do attend college still experience lower persistence and graduation rates. Slightly more than half of Black full-time students earned a degree after six years, compared with nearly 70% of white students. That's a graduation rate gap of roughly 18 percentage points.

I think we hear the statistics so often that we've become desensitized to what happens if we accept them as the status quo. If this is normative, we presuppose that Black students are less capable than their white peers. We know that this brand of eugenics has long been proven untrue, unhealthy and dangerous.

This year, students will arrive in college classrooms with heavy baggage: Family members lost to COVID-19. Financial insecurity. Disrupted senior years of high school.

So, what are we missing? The human element.

Like many Black students from the South Side of Chicago, I came to college with obstacles stacked against me. I had an expected family contribution of $0, less rigorous academic preparation, one ill parent and another absent one. As a first-generation college student, I came without knowing how to move through the higher education world. I still managed to earn a full-tuition merit scholarship to a small, affluent institution in the hills of Ohio.

For all the opportunities I had, I realized I was there specifically to add diversity to the student body. Nine other students and I were chosen by a program that matched students missed by traditional selective admissions processes with schools that needed and wanted to increase degree attainment for students of color.

At this small school on the hill, I got my first real taste of racism. I checked out a vacuum cleaner to tidy up my room and a classmate's parent assumed I was a janitor, asking if I could clean his son's room next. This soul-crushing encounter paled in comparison to being the only Black person in class, not being part of group projects because of my race.

When I struggled in a course and reached out for support, the university advised me to change my major to something easier instead of giving me the tools to succeed.

After working in higher education for the past 14 years, I now know how disastrous this advice was. However, for a young, impressionable Black student who didn't feel like he belonged, it was enough for me to abandon my dream because, ultimately, I wanted to graduate.

I wasn't seen as a full person. At the end of four long years, I had scraped, clawed and bled on my way to the finish line. Every semester, I always had a job and faithfully sold my textbooks for pennies on the dollar just to afford to put gas in my car to make it back from Ohio to Chicago to support my ill mother.

During those years, I wanted someone, anyone, to really ask: How are you? What's your story? Can I help?

It is challenging to make it to graduation when you know that your peers have many advantages that you don't have because of your personal and financial background and the color of your skin. That realization would cause most people to quit. Often, we don't have the benefit of parents and grandparents who can guide us on the best route to take and what pitfalls to avoid. We have to try our hardest when the world around us reinforces the message that we won't succeed and were never capable of trying.

In my role as vice president of student affairs at Roosevelt University, I now get to support students from similar backgrounds who may face similar challenges. I don't have the perfect solution to increase Black student enrollment or graduation rates. I do, however, know it is critical to center the student in our work.

We need to see our Black students as whole, intersectional people, not as data or a category based solely on their race. They show up to our campuses full of hope and fear, but are also exceptional beyond our wildest dreams, just like all students. Treat them not as a statistic, but a capable and qualified student who has something to offer.

We should tell them: You will graduate. You are capable. You belong here.

• Jamar Orr, J.D., of Chicago, is vice president of student affairs and dean of students at Roosevelt University.