Creating a More Successful College Experience for Black Students - Higher Education: In order for Black students, who are traditionally marginalized and excluded, to enter higher education and succeed, they need to learn how to participate fully in the academic environment. Oftentimes these students start college, but leave during the first semester because they feel as if they cannot make it in the White-dominated college environment.
They enter the environment mostly under prepared, and their dreams of earning a degree quickly fade as the realization of higher education’s expectations upon them are difficult, if impossible to meet and they end up becoming part of the some 30% of minority college students who enter college but do not earn their degrees.
Burke and Johnston suggest that in order to tame the violent flames of inequity in educational accessibility, we first need to begin to prepare students early for a postsecondary academic environment. This does suggest that teachers in elementary, middle and high school need to expect that all of their students will enter postsecondary education and teach accordingly. Next, they suggest that college faculty need to transform their experiences and expectations by including the Black students and engaging them during instruction.
