Only 40% of black college students graduate within six years; 62% of whites do. No one knows why. One academic has suggested teaching “grit” and “determination” in the face of obstacles. But what minority students often need is good advice. Higher education is a maze of different courses and programmes, which students who are the first in their family to attend college struggle to navigate. Some choose their courses simply because they begin late in the morning, or because their friends are doing them. As a result, they often fail.
Some institutions, such as Georgia State University, have improved results by getting faculty, advisers and older students to work more closely with minority students. But this takes time and money. Technology can help.
The University of Arizona has a system called eAdvisor. This keeps track of each student’s progress towards his degree, and can make sure that courses which are critical but difficult—such as maths or statistics—are taken early on. Thanks to this system, which came online in 2007, the proportion of students (of all races) who move up to the next year each year has risen from 77% to 84%.
New findings from four Tennessee colleges support the idea that eAdvisors work. Software called the Degree Compass (developed by Tristan Denley, a mathematician) makes course suggestions for students in much the same way that Netflix recommends films to watch and Amazon offers goods to buy. The program ranks courses by their usefulness to a student for the degree he is taking, and also predicts those in which he is likely to get the best grade.
Large-scale trials of the Degree Compass have been held at Austin Peay State University and three other institutions. Students who follow its course recommendations increase their number of credit hours and gain better grades. (Credit hours are the basic units that count towards a degree in America.) The usual probability of getting an A or a B at these institutions is around 62%. But if a student takes a course in which Degree Compass has predicted at least a B for him, there is a 90% chance he will get it.
When students take the courses they are recommended to, minority students show the largest gains in credit hours per term. These gains largely erase the achievement gap between whites and minorities at those particular southern colleges. This stood at two credit-hours per term in 2011; last year it was 0.7 hours. A similar result was found with poorer students on Pell Grants. And the software can also predict future course demand. This should help colleges tailor their schedules, so that more students get on to suitable courses and graduate in four years—without dropping out first.