Hechinger’s Meredith Kolodner, writing in The Atlantic, explains how Rutgers-Newark helps black students graduate. Nationwide, the four-year college graduation rate for black students is half that of whites, she writes. At Rutgers-Newark, blacks are as likely as whites to make it to a degree. In 2015, Rutgers-Newark’s six-year graduation rate was 64 percent for black students and 63 percent for white students, according to administrators, compared with 40 percent and 61 perce

A majority of working-class whites think college is a “risky gamble,” according to a new survey, reports the Houston Chronicle. Only 44 percent of whites said getting a college education is a smart investment, while 54 percent said college may not pay off, the PRRI/Atlantic analysis found. Blacks and Latinos strongly believe going to college is worthwhile, the survey reported. Overall, 55 percent of Americans called getting a college education a smart investment. In a survey

Thomas Sowell Thomas Sowell was born poor and black in North Carolina in 1930. In a Wall Street Journal interview with Tunku Varadarajan, Sowell explains how he made it to the Ivy League and a career as an economist, social theorist and writer. When he was 9, his mother moved with him to Harlem “to live with relatives who promised a better life for the boy.” He visited a library for the first time. It was “wondrous.” A boy named Eddie, a family friend, became his guide. “I wa

“When states raise the number of math classes they require students to take in high school,” black students take more math and go on to earn more money, writes Emily DeRuy in The Atlantic. The higher requirements pushed more students to complete algebra and geometry — not calculus. “One of the reasons white students weren’t really affected by curriculum changes is that they were already taking the classes anyway,” she writes. “Black students weren’t.” #blacks #earnings #gradu