Image

10:05 PM / Sunday February 9, 2025

27 Mar 2011

How to shrink the college Completion gap

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
March 27, 2011 Category: Color Of Money Posted by:

By Gregory Ferenstein

FAST COMPANY/BLACK POLITICS ON THE WEB

 

Two Stanford researchers have tested a confidence-boosting technique that dramatically increases the performance of minorities in college.

 

Two Stanford researchers have found a free, universally accessible method of shrinking the college minority grade gap. A simple, one-hour confidence boosting intervention dramatically boosted GPA, and also had lingering effects on well-being, health, and negative stereotyping.

 

College is an exceedingly fragile time for most students, slightly less than half of whom never finish. For minorities, the problems is especially pronounced. “When your group is in the minority, being rejected by a classmate or having a teacher say something negative to you could seem like proof that you don’t belong, and maybe evidence that your group doesn’t belong either, ” Professor Gregory Walton tells ScienceDaily. “That feeling could lead you to work less hard and ultimately do less well.”

 

To combat the devastating mix of insecurity and home-sickness, a randomly selected group of students–both white/European and African American–took part in a therapeutic self-affirming exercise. Participants read narratives of upperclassmen speaking about their own college difficulties to encourage “students to attribute adversity not to fixed deficits unique to themselves or their ethnic group but to common and transient aspects of the college-adjustment process,” reads the study.

 

The clincher of the intervention included a psychological slight-of-hand, having students read aloud and record their own thoughts for future students. The technique, what the researchers call “saying-is-believing effect,” leads participants to secretly internalize the message being spoken. The results, published in the prestigious journal, Science, were remarkable for minorities: a roughly 25 percent saw an increase in GPA, triple the percentage of those in the top 25 percent of their class, and 32 percent experienced a decrease in self-reported doctors visits. By comparison, the intervention had a much smaller effect for white students, confirming the the researchers’ hunch that negative stereotyping was behind poor minority performance.

 

While the results of the study are still experimental, the the techniques may provide a cheap and effective way to reduce the racial disparity in higher education.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Leave a Comment

Recent News

Color Of Money

Beech stands in the gap during funding crisis supporting non-profits for 35 years

February 9, 2025

Share Tweet Email Derrick Thomas, program manager for the Affordable Housing Centers of PA accepts the grant...

Seniors

How Type 2 inflammation contributes to asthma, COPD, and allergic conditions

February 3, 2025

Share Tweet Email BPT Do you live with persistent, moderate-to-severe asthma, COPD, allergies, eczema or hives? Inflammation...

Home and Garden

PHS Philadelphia Flower Show shares first glimpse of 2025’s ‘Gardens of Tomorrow’

January 20, 2025

Share Tweet Email The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS) hosted a press conference on January 16 at the...

Week In Review

Auschwitz survivors warn of rising hatred on the 80th anniversary of the death camp’s liberation

February 2, 2025

Share Tweet Email Canadian Holocaust survivor Miriam Ziegler holds up a photo of her (circled) as as...

Sports

The Rematch

January 27, 2025

Share Tweet Email The Philadelphia Eagles are headed to New Orleans for a rematch with the Kansas...

Health

Expert tips from a dietitian: Three keys to staying healthy on GLP-1s

February 3, 2025

Share Tweet Email BPT By Satya Jonnalagadda, PhD, MBA, RDN With obesity rates tripling over the past...

The Philadelphia Sunday Sun Staff