Coming, Grand, & Haran 1

Marissa Coming, Samuel Grand, Neil Haran

Dr. Fowler
Honors Political Science 1010
26 April 2017
Racial Parity in Graduation Rates at Wayne State University
As racial tensions in America stir, due, in no small part, to the political fields from which

they sprung and continue to be maintained, discussions of structural violence qua anti-black

racism have hardly been scarce in the mainstream media and press. The modalities of this charge

of racial violence shift in name and shape from case to case: police brutality, gentrification,

militarism, rallies, riots, and rebellions- all of these spectacles that illustrate the quotidian

realities of Black Americans find themselves squarely situated within a landscape of institutional

and social forces colliding. One such encounter between these forces, perhaps less spectacular in

nature, has been educational parity. Across the nation, Black students are part of a fight for equal

opportunity within our countrys educational systems that has lasted for decades. Detroit is no

exception- quite the opposite: it may be an epicenter. Detroits racial economy of value regarding

its Black students, specifically those that attend Wayne State University, leaves many questions

to be asked, and urgent solutions pursued.

According to the most recent statistics, the nationwide college graduation rate for black

students stands at an appallingly low rate of 42 percent. This figure is 20 percentage points below

the 62 percent rate for white students. One positive thing is that over the past couple years the

Black student graduation rate has improved by roughly 7 percent for Black students. Although

the national graduation rates for Black students are lower on average than their white

counterparts, black women are far more likely than black men to complete college. Black women

are at an average of 46 percent while black men are at a lower 35 percent.

According to The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, the more encouraging fact is the that

over the past seven years the black student graduation rate has improved at almost all of the

nation's highest-ranked universities. Obviously, this undercuts the assertion made by many
 Coming, Grand, & Haran 2

conservatives that black students admitted to our most prestigious colleges and universities under

race-conscious admissions programs are incapable of competing with their white peers and

should instead seek admissions at less academically rigorous schools. The fact that almost all

Black students at Harvard, Amherst, Princeton, and several other highly ranked colleges and

universities go on to earn their diplomas within the allotted time for national rankings (four to six

years) shows that African Americans do compete successfully at our nation's most prestigious

institutions of higher education. Harvard and Amherst have graduation rates for Black students at

94-95 percent. Currently, the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor has the highest graduation rates

among black students in Michigan at 90 percent matriculation and Michigan State University at

78 percent. Academically-selective institutions are almost always strongly committed to

affirmative action in admissions, yet at the same time they tend to deliver a high black student

graduation rate. Obviously, this undercuts the assertion made by many conservatives that black

students admitted to our most prestigious colleges and universities under race-conscious

admissions programs are incapable of competing with their white peers and should instead seek

admissions at less academically rigorous schools. The fact that almost all entering black students

at Harvard, Amherst, Princeton, and several other highly ranked colleges and universities go on

to earn their diplomas shows that African Americans do compete successfully at our nation's

most prestigious institutions of higher education.

Wayne State still has the lowest graduation rate among the State's public universities at

32 percent. "If the U.S. wants to continue to remain a global economic leader, it needs a well-

educated population," said Jeff Lieberson, spokesman for the Association of Public and Land-

grant Universities (Kozlowski). Only one in ten Black students at Wayne State University earns a

bachelors degree within six years of becoming a freshman, the lowest rate in the nation among

public colleges with a population of 10,000 or more, according to a new study. We have much
 Coming, Grand, & Haran 3

work to do, but the trend, I believe, is pointing in the right direction, and we have excellent

programs and initiatives in place to address the gap, Whitfield said (Neavling). In the past eight

years, the enrollment rates at Wayne State has dropped about 50 percent for black students.

Educators have suggested that graduation rates are lower among African Americans because

they are disproportionately subjected to underfunded, substandard K-12 educations. To close the

achievement gaps, many universities are providing academic and financial support for

disadvantaged students, according to a comprehensive study by The Education Trust

(Neavling).
Wayne State is categorized as one of the top 3 research institutions in Michigan along

with University of Michigan and Michigan State University so why does it not compare in

numbers. Wayne State is known all around for its diversity but why does this diversity not come

with high student graduation rates. Wayne State is not attracting the best students similar to

Michigan State and University of Michigan. Many students are so worried about getting out of

Detroit that they dont even consider Wayne State as an option for college. Wayne State doesnt

offer enough incentive for many students. Students tend to go where they are most valued and

what University they believe will appear better in the future. If Wayne State wants to change its

reputation and appearance of black students then they need to take action. It looks as if Wayne

State is more concerned with the appearance the university holds rather than the achievement of

their students. The university needs to devote more time into their students in order to help them

succeed and graduate in a timely manner.

Many of these students have already received a mediocre education from the Detroit

Public Schools System and arent as prepared as students who come from better well-rounded

schools. Although DPS plays a part they are not the sole factors. Parenting also plays a huge part

because children who are raised in bad environments will have problems in school and the
 Coming, Grand, & Haran 4

community. High dropout rates appear to be primarily caused by inferior K-12 preparation and

an absence of a family college tradition, conditions that apply to a very large percentage of

today's college-bound African Americans. But equally important considerations are family

wealth and the availability of financial aid. A huge issue that all students are clearly aware of that

Wayne State is the rising tuition rates. Tuition is continuously raising at Wayne and this can be

very hard for students coming from low income households. Not only are there very large

outlays for tuition, books, and travel, but, even more important, going to college takes a student

out of the work force for four or more years. The total bite into family income and wealth can

amount to $160,000 or more per student. High and always increasing college costs tend to

produce much greater hardships for black families. Well-funded universities such as Princeton,

which has the nation's largest endowment per student and probably the nation's most generous

financial aid program for low-income students.

Being a minority has a positive effect on graduation probabilities, but, overall, minorities

are less likely than their white counterparts to complete college because they possess fewer

favorable unobserved factors (Light). These low graduation rates dont just stop at Wayne State.

In general, minorities will enter college unprepared and poor. There are high percentages who are

also the first in their families to attend college. The University of Illinois-Chicago has a similar

proportion of students receiving federal Pell Grants (awarded to economically disadvantaged

students), yet has an African-American graduation rate of 39.7 percent. Students at Indiana

University-Purdue University at Indianapolis have a similar median composite ACT as Wayne

students, but black students graduate at more than double the rate of Wayne State's

(Magazine). Although these universities have students that begin college with the same skills

and financial stability as Wayne State students, they are higher at graduating their students.

Even though the school says students are graduating, just not in the six-year time frame. Is the
 Coming, Grand, & Haran 5

real problem invested in Wayne State providing the proper support and resources for these

students?
Clearly, the racial climate at some colleges and universities is more favorable toward

African Americans than at other campuses. A nurturing environment for black students is almost

certain to have a positive impact on black student retention and graduation rates. Brown

University, for example, although often troubled by racial incidents, is famous for its efforts to

make its campus a happy place for African Americans. In contrast, the University of California at

Berkeley has had its share of racial turmoil in recent years. The small number of black students

on campus as a result of the abolishment of race-sensitive admissions has made many African

Americans on campus feel unwelcome. This probably contributes to the low black student

graduation rate at Berkeley. Many of the colleges and universities with high black student

graduation rates have set in place orientation and retention programs to help black students adapt

to the culture of predominantly white campuses. Mentoring programs for black first-year

students involving upperclassmen have been successful at many colleges and universities. Other

institutions appear to improve graduation rates through strong black student organizations that

foster a sense of belonging among the African-American student population.

We accept the view that a very strong black student graduation rate is a good indicator of

institutional success in racial integration of a given campus. But readers are cautioned that a

lower graduation rate can be a positive indicator of a college or university's willingness to take a

chance on academically dedicated young black students with substandard academic credentials.

Many academics and administrators will be surprised to hear that there are a few selective

colleges in the United States that report a higher graduation rate for blacks than for whites. Five

of the nation's highest-ranked colleges and universities actually have a higher graduation rate for

black students than for white students. According to the latest statistics from Mount Holyoke
 Coming, Grand, & Haran 6

College, Pomona College, Smith College, Wellesley College, and Macalester College, a black

student on these campuses is more likely to complete the four-year course of study and receive a

diploma than is a white student. At some institutions the difference in black and white graduation

rates is very small. Washington University in St. Louis has a 90 percent graduation rate for both

blacks and whites. At Wake Forest University and Wesleyan University, the white student

graduation rate is only one percentage point higher than the rate for blacks. At Amherst College,

Harvard University, and Oberlin College, the difference is only two percentage points. At the Ivy

League schools Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Brown, the black graduation rates are

relatively high, and in all instances they are five percentage points or less below the graduation

rate for white students. At Yale, Penn, Dartmouth, and Cornell, there is at least a seven

percentage point racial gap in graduation rates (Black Student Graduation Rates).

There have been many different policies proposed from a variety of

different sectors to try and address the atrociously poor rate of black

graduation at Wayne State. Our group chose to focus on policies from

different levels of governance, which have been proposed and in some cases

implemented or passed, which pertain to the issue. The policies are the

performance-based funding measure passed by the Michigan State

Legislature, the various academic policies and programs instituted by the

University itself to try and improve the educational attainment of students,

and the proposal to make college tuition free, a prominent issue from the

2016 election.

The Michigan State Legislature first passed into law in 2012 the

performance-based funding system. The original bill began as corrective

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measure intended to address funding issues for the States Universitys which

were the result of the prior fiscal years 15% across the board cut to state

funding of Higher Education (Bowerman and Peterson). Each year since the

passage of the original bill for performance-based funding, the initial bill has

been passed again the following fiscal year, although most years have

included major modifications from the previous years bill in the process of

the formulas used to determination how the performance-based funding is

allocated to the States Universities. In all the forms of the Performance-

Based Funding, since its inception it has been passed to allocate increased

funding for Universities from the prior year, meaning the total funding from

the prior fiscal year was already guaranteed, including the Performance-

Based Funding allotted from the prior year. This ensures that in every

successive year of the Performance-Based Funding, Universities should all

see an increase in the funding from the State, however the total increase in

State funding of Higher Education remains set at a fixed number, and the

Performance-Based Funding only determines how the predetermined funding

increase is distributed amongst the States public Universities. The most

relevant form of the performance-based funding, however is the form that

was passed for the fiscal year of 2016-2017, the most recent and arguably

the most radically different from its predecessors. The way Performance-

Based Funding is determined as determined it stands in its current form, half

of all the budgetary increase for institutions is determined by a proportion of

their fiscal year 2010-11 state funding (Bowerman and Peterson).

 Coming, Grand, & Haran 8

The other half of the increase is based on a formula which measures

Universities based on six metrics. The first two metrics are in proportion to

how each University measures up on the metrics themselves, the

expenditures for each of the first two metrics is predetermined to a specific

amount of money, which is then divided between the Universities. The first

two metrics are simply the number of undergraduate degree completions in

critical skills areas, and research and development expenditures, a fairly

straightforward and basic measurement. The first metric, in which funds are

allocated based on the number of undergrad degree completions in certain

areas, Wayne State loses out because the University serves underprivileged

populations and higher risk students (Office of University Budget). This

creates a disparity as inherently based on the student populations Wayne

serves, it will graduate a smaller percentage of its students than other more

selective Universities, which creates disparity between the Universitys

number of students and their costs, and the funds received from the State.

The later four metrics of the second half of Performance-Based

Funding, is based on a system that evaluates how a University compares to

their peer institutions. There is an inherent problem in this system, because

it determines a Universitys peers based solely on the Carnegie Foundations

classification system, which is essentially based on the levels of Research at

a University. The Universities are then compared to their peers on four

metrics and assigned scores, which are then multiplied by the number of

undergraduate students enrolled at the University, to determine the funding

 Coming, Grand, & Haran 9

allotment for 33% of the total funding increases thru Performance-Based

Funding. The metrics are the six-year graduation rate, the total number of

degree completions, institutional support expenditures as a percent of the

total core expenditures, and the percent of students receiving Pell grants

(Bowerman and Peters). The Carnegie research classification pits Wayne

State against other Carnegie Tier-1 Universities like MSU and UofM. This

creates a system where Wayne States mission and location make it unable

to truly compete for the funding it needs, unless Wayne State were to

compromise on its commitment to one or more components of its mission

(Office of University Budget).

Ultimately the idea behind Performance-Based Funding was to

incentivize improvement by Universities of aspects like graduation rates,

which are notoriously bad for minorities. However, the reality of

Performance-Based Funding in its current state is that it only serves to

further perpetuate inequality, rewarding schools with plentiful funding and

selective-admission processes, and punishing schools that differ.

Sadly, the lack of an acknowledgement of and compensation for the

unique situation faced by Wayne State in the funding formula is not an

accident. It is merely another symptom of a massive problem, the macro-

scale devaluation of Black students by policymakers, particularly those

belonging to the Republican Party. This devaluation is the result of

deracialized analysis and policymaking in education, which is the result of

the significant opposition within the Republican Party to any policy that takes
 Coming, Grand, & Haran 10

race into consideration, a policy that ultimately maintains the status quo and

the current hierarchy. The opposition of the Republican Party to any

accounting for race in policy, as seen in its staunch and uniform opposition to

anything with the slightest resemblance to affirmative action, in other words

racialized policy (Martin and Kuklinski). It seems unlikely that anytime soon

there will be any real genuine change to address the problems with

Performance-Based Funding.

Another policy that has been enacted to try and improve the black

graduation rate has been on the Universitys administrative level. Wayne has

enacted a swathe of new programs recently to try and improve academic

achievement, thereby improving graduation rates.

The University has begun to implement a massive ramp up of the

University advising systems and programs. Automated intrusive advising programs

(which lets students know early on in the semester if their grades are below adequate standards),

have been implemented throughout Waynes University grades systems. Wayne has also hired 45

new academic advisors, in order to massively increase the Universitys advising capacity, which

helps students make better more informed choices with regards to classes and their academic

careers in general, which facilitates better outcomes for students (Settles).

The University also began creating numerous bridge programs and on campus resources

to assist students, particularly high-risk students. To help students from high risk backgrounds,

particularly those from the DPS system, the University created a summer bridge program called

Academic Pathways for Excellence Scholars, which helps students become college ready, and
 Coming, Grand, & Haran 11

improve the necessary academic skills they will need for college. The program also continues to

provide specialized on campus tutoring to students who qualify for the program (students from

disadvantaged backgrounds) (APEX). There is also additional learning assistance resources

available to all current Wayne students, including a math resource center, an academic success

center, research and writing assistance programs, and supplemental instruction to help students

learn and succeed in their courses.

The effectiveness of the aforementioned changes and major efforts undertaken by the

University cannot yet be accurately assessed. The programs are still relatively new and accurate

assessment of the new resources impacts on graduation rates will require time, as new students

who have access to the resources from the beginning of their time in college matriculate, the

University will be able to use more accurate measures of data. However, use of similar

contemporary on campus resources at colleges has shown statistically significant benefits in

academic achievement among those who use them, which eventually does translate into

improved retention and graduation rates of students (Franklin and Blankenburger).

The aforementioned policy solutions are well intentioned; however, they do nothing to

directly address one of the primary reasons that college students, especially minorities drop out,

which is for financial reasons (Cox and Gillman). The third policy our group examined was a

contentious policy proposal to make college tuition free. The policy was first proposed in the

2016 primaries by Bernie Sanders and eventually a modified version of it was adopted by the

Democratic party as part of their platform (Frizell). The two policies have many of the same

ideas and some of the same flaws, and neither were passed as even in the reduced mainstream

form, the represent policy is an extremely socialist idea. The Republican Party value structure,

which has become more extreme in the last few decades, has emerged as a steadfast opponent to
 Coming, Grand, & Haran 12

progressivist ideals, and has been described by some political scientists as being engaged in a full

scale culture war to protect what they believe are American values that are essential to

American national identity and prosperity. Within their value structure individualism, and limited

government (especially on economic issues) are held sacred, and form the one of the

cornerstones of the Republican Partys Ideology today (Jacoby). The idea of a mass expansion of

the government paying for the tuition of all students (or any large expansion) is fundamentally at

odds with the core beliefs and guiding principles of the Republican Party. The Republican Party

as per the results of the 2016 primary elections, controls both Houses of the Legislature and the

Presidency, which effectively kills any chance the policy had of being enacted within the next

two or four years (Killough and Barrett).

Even without the consideration of the stalwart political opposition from the Republican

party, both versions of the policy proposal for making college tuition free, at least for some,

contain considerable structural flaws, which would impede the garnering of the support of many

Democrats as well. A serious problem with both forms of the free college proposal, which would

apply only for public aka state funded institutions, is that levels of state funding to

colleges vary from state-to-state, and the initiative would be paid for by the

federal government. So, if the federal government pays for tuition, then state

colleges and universities where the state better funds their higher education

receive less federal money, since their tuition prices and per student costs

are lower. This essentially will reward states that underfund their higher

education, while punishing the states that already fund it better; this aspect

of the proposal is likely to garner the opposition of any Democratic

representatives whose states wouldnt be benefiting from the proposal; and

 Coming, Grand, & Haran 13

whose residents would be unfairly paying a disproportionate amount of taxes

on higher education, to pay for the tuition in the states that underfund

education (Feldman and Archibald). Ultimately however the proposals fail to

do any anything substantive for most of the most at-risk and financially

disadvantaged students, for most of whom Pell grants already cover their

tuition costs, for these at-risk students costs of living expenses and family

obligations are more often the source of their financial problems (Kelly). The

price tag for either

The policy proposed by Bernie Sanders, while rabidly popular amongst

the generally liberal millennial generation, contains some unique problems of

its own. The policy that he proposed would have made the US federal

government pay for 2/3rds of the tuition price, with states matching the final

1/3rd, to pay the college tuition of anyone who graduates from high school in

the US, to attend any public four-year university. He explicitly proposed it to

try and make college affordable for everyone, specifically to make college

possible for students from poor backgrounds, citing the growing wealth

inequality and increasingly unaffordable cost of a college education for many

Americans and their families. However, there is a problem with this policy as

a solution, which is that his plan would actually most advantage families

from the higher income brackets, as they receive more benefits from the

plan because they are already the vast majority of students at the more

expensive universities (Chingos).

 Coming, Grand, & Haran 14

There are also significant problems with Hilary Clintons policy

proposal, which was endorsed by Obama, to make community college free

for students whose families make less than $125,000 a year (Frizell). While

her proposal is far less expensive and more practical, as it doesnt require

independent legislative actions from the states to function; Hillarys proposal

has some of its own unique problems. One of the largest concerns for some

education policy experts is the concern that the proposal could incentivize

students to undermatch when they choose colleges, prompting them into

attending a community-college, where they are more likely to do poorly and

drop out. This problem is accompanied by the problem of the incredibly poor

graduation rates at community colleges where less than 40% of students

who start out obtain a degree within 6 years. The influx of federal funding

and students would not do anything to address the institutional shortcomings

that result in such poor educational outcomes at community colleges, and

would serve to dramatically increase the prevalence of a system that by

many standards is failing (Goldrik-Rab).

The free college policy proposals show no promise in terms of their likelihood of passing,

and in terms of truly addressing the issues that they are supposedly intended for. In terms of

Federal funding for higher education the consensus among many education policy experts seems

to be in favor of directly funding Universities to reward good outcomes, and promote

improvement, instead of essentially incentivizing tuition hikes with lucrative federal funds

(Kelly).
 Coming, Grand, & Haran 15

All of this brings us to a unique predicament: what exactly is to be done? The difficulty

of approaching the contours of Wayne State Universitys lack of racial parity in its six-year

graduation rates is compounded by several factors, each of which deserves its own analysis. One

such factor that works against this racial problematics resolution is that the specificities of

university-oriented policies are alienated from citizens who are either no longer in college, or no

longer have any vested interests (typically in the form of children or direct profession-oriented

involvement) in maintaining the coherence of the general University. Even more specificity

might be attached to Wayne State University in this scenario because it is also entirely possible

that the citizens with political capital and/or weight to throw around are not the same citizens that

end up populating Wayne State Universitys student body- typically from lower-income areas

with higher academic risk and less political mobilization associated with their communal polity

(Office of University Budget). Instead, the efforts of those citizens who have a vested interest

and motivation to improve the functioning of Michigans universities would direct those political

desires towards universities that do not share Wayne States exact set of issues such as the

University of Michigan or Michigan State University.

The second problematic that advocates for Wayne States Black students face is that of

the policy analysis necessary to analyze, deconstruct, and forward a replacement for flawed

status quo policies such as the performance based funding metric system discussed above. The

structural barriers such as the diminished quality of K-12 education in Detroits Public Schools

set concerned students up for failure in college as well as a diminished capability to articulate to

government structures/elected officials what specifically about a nuanced and densely-phrased

policy is flawed, and what possible correctives might be put into place. This means that the

activism surrounding current communal engagements, both with grassroots efforts as well as

state-based initiatives will be the trickle-down activism of policymakers who do not have as
 Coming, Grand, & Haran 16

strong external motivations to resolve this issue. One might term this impediment to communal

engagements apolitical inertia since its barring of primarily racial minorities and low-income

communities results in political apathy or frustration. At the level of Wayne State Universitys

internal bureaucratic infrastructure, there is also the issue of logistical barriers to getting

citizens/students involved. Since initiatives often take the form of proposals for new programs,

their proponents must overcome the perception that the University, by creating new programs, is

wasting the very resources that it is already perceived as lamenting due to fiscal shortages

(Office of University Budget). The move to create new programs also could carry the additional

public-relations baggage of being perceived as failing to adequately grapple with issues facing

existing academic success programs. To overcome these impediments to communal engagement,

there are two proposed paths that our group formed over the course of several weeks. The first of

these takes the form of direct action.

One such proposal towards direct action that focuses on mobilizing the population of

Wayne State University students, particularly those in the Honors College seems to be pressuring

Wayne State University to focus its efforts on improving the functioning, efficiency, accessibility,

and awareness of existing academic programs. Wayne State Universitys programs that are

specifically geared towards helping students achieve academic success vary in their nature- be it

form of the institution or the subject area that it wishes to assist with- but they share one

commonality: not many students seem to be using them to their maximum capacity (a fact that

was revealed over the course of several on-site trips to sites such as Wayne States Writing,

Research and Technology Zone WRTZ).

This managerial shift in how Wayne State creates, maintains, and deploys its existing

programs can take place in a variety of ways within the different programs, but the nuance

required to amend the inner workings of each program is not feasible for a small number of
 Coming, Grand, & Haran 17

students to accomplish within the span of a semester. Instead, efforts would be better focused on

getting students to actually show up and utilize these facilities. After all, the problem is better

represented as a lack of utilization of resources than an internal problem with the resources

themselves. Focusing on this effort, opposed to the pulsive and shallow advocacies that rise up

within the student body for a constant stream of new programs is net beneficial since it avoids

the barriers that would come with allocating funds to new programs and figuring out exactly

what unique service they would offer that is not already accounted for by the Universitys

existing facilities.
The awareness-based advocacy plan that our group chose to perform was merely putting

up posters in areas that undergraduate students frequent, such as the undergraduate library, State

Hall, and Old Main. These create contact zones where students in passing can see that there are a

variety of generally helpful services available, such as the Writing, Research, and Technology

Zone, as well as a variety of more-specific options such as subject and class-oriented tutoring

sessions that can be arranged either with university faculty or student volunteers. One concern

that rose with this is the possible costs that increased usage of academic assistance programs

would have on the University. While Wayne State University does not have the funding details

for their academic assistance programs publicly available, our group concluded that this access-

based approach would not have a detrimental fiscal impact on the programs because it merely

utilizes existing resources instead of creating new ones that would, in turn, require additional

extraneous funding.
Even students who do not find themselves in an academic predicament have a role to play

in this process. Because a Universitys student body can be seen as a network or assemblage of

heterogenous parts, playing different roles within the schools educational economy. Those

whose role in increasing Black students graduation rates is not of immediate consequence to
 Coming, Grand, & Haran 18

them, (typically by nature of their social locations being neither Black nor low-income), might

think to engage this process by pressuring the University administration to focus on communal

outreach to high schools in lower-income areas within Detroit. Additionally, these students who

populate programs such as the Honors College might be more-likely to have adequate knowledge

of the academic assistance programs that Wayne State offers: that also happens to be valuable

information that they can pass off to their peers who may be struggling. Tracing a timeline for

the impact that these events would have is difficult, since there was not an empirical/peer-

reviewed study on how potently these patterns of information distribution function.

This brings us to the second proposal that is rooted in an approach to institutions and

policy: an amendment to the previously-discussed performance-based funding metric system that

currently defines the ways that Michigan distributes state-funding to Universities. As explained

above, the current proposals fail to account for the specificities of each institutions mission as

well as the specific problems and structural barriers facing the communities that are their

[Universities] main sources of students. That being said, the system of performance-based

funding metrics does not have to be thrown out in its entirety- it actually has the potential to

produce net-positive results for students by encouraging public Universities in Michigan to

remain competitive when choosing how to maintain their educational frameworks (Bowerman

and Peterson 4).

The current categories for performance based funding (detailed above) measure the six

different criteria homogenously across the Carnegie tier-1 institutions. Correctives to this system

at the level of policy phrasing might include the imposition of intervening variables in

assessment methods for the six metrics such as the risk-level of the students attending that

University. This would allow an intervention into all of the metrics while ensuring the goals of

academic achievement that they were formulated to maintain stay intact across the board.
 Coming, Grand, & Haran 19

Possible ways of measuring this risk factor can and should include factors such as the race,

income, and K-12 institutions attended of the students that a specific University typically

accepts. For example, the University of Michigan cannot be said to be populated by students

from the exact same socioeconomic demographics as Wayne State University. In this case, the

University of Michigan should logically be given less leeway in its adherence to metrics because

there is a smaller chance that that institutions students social locations will negatively affect

their undergraduate performance.

The socioeconomic framing of this adjustment to status quo policies in the public sphere

is just as important as the phrasing of the policy itself. The status quo approach to education has

been woefully inadequate at dealing with the identarian realities of the subjects its contents are

concerned with. Specifically, the way that funding distribution occurs takes no account of racial

or economic variance. This epistemological construction of neutrality might be better called the

preservation of whiteness since, as the canon of critical race theory (CRT) scholars have pointed

out, whiteness hides within neutrality as a flat epistemology in which the organization of

knowledge is hierarchical, unidirectional, and reductive (Calderon 75). This approach is

totalizing, assuming a singular way of knowing that precludes critical interventions and it is not

derived from an organic community (Calderon 75). When one fails to account for the racialized

contours of this organic community within a field such as education policy, one places a

standard of false socio-economic uniformity onto a group of people whose racial identity ensures

that their experience, privilege, and access to the policy in question, are all heterogenous and

fractured. In other words, Whiteness appears to be commonsensical, universal and value-

neutral (Calderon 75). This adjustment in specificity allows for an analysis which is both

access-based (addressing the uniqueness of identarian differences) as well as consequence-based

 Coming, Grand, & Haran 20

(adequately ensuring that performance-based funding as a concept is not thrown out the

feasibility window and instead improved).

One such mechanism for achieving this institutional corrective is to build up the

sociopolitical inertia behind the movement to amend performance-based funding metrics. While

Wayne State Universitys administration has already put out several requests and complaints to

the Michigan State Legislature (Office of University Budget) however, those have been met with

general indifference since they appear to represent such a small amount of the elected officials

representative polity. This can be overcome through the classic strength in numbers principle.

If students were to mobilize activist groups that already exist within the campus such as By Any

Means Necessary (BAMN), the Black Student Union (BSU), the Black and Latinx Biological

Sciences Majors (BLBSM), and the African American Psychology Student Organization

(AAPSO) as well as utilize professorial connections such as email blasts with petitions to the

Honors College, this inertia could be exponentially multiplied. Additionally, students might think

to work with external organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) whose

members and staff have previous experience in dealing with these sorts of predicaments. This

provides access to a plethora of methods and networks that already fit within the access-and-

consequence-based frame outlined above.

The immediacy of these results is, again, unapparent since there are no empirical research

studies that have grappled with the specificity of the ways that performance-based funding

metrics lack socioeconomic specificity within their mechanisms. However, reverse causal

inferences can be made from the Universitys previous statements on how these metrics affected

the student body as well as institution itself. We quote The Office of University Budget at some

length to get at this projected trend:

In 2000, the Universitys state appropriation accounted for approximately two-thirds of

our general fund budget and tuition accounted for one-third. State appropriation has, in absolute
 Coming, Grand, & Haran 21

dollars, dropped $61,587,000 between 2003 ($245,520,000) and 2014 ($183,398,300). Now one-

third of our general fund budget comes from the state and two-thirds from tuition. After the

states funding allocation for 2016, Wayne State will have recovered less than one-third of the

$32-million budget cut it received in FY 2012 (Office of University Budget).

Because this has had a substantial and negative effect on students ability to pay tuition

(one of the contributing factors to low-income students ability to attend universities [Office of

University Budget]) the reverse causal can also be said to be true, lowering tuition costs while

maintaining the quality of education.

There does not seem to be much of a zero-sum game to be played between the two

methods proposed above, which significantly reduces the magnitude of the consequences of

pursuing one without simultaneously pursuing the other. That being said, an over-focus on

institutions, even if they may assume the majority of the culpability, tends to obscure the impact

that quotidian activities has on a population. For example, were one to halt their analysis of

Black students graduation parity at Wayne State University with performance-based funding

metrics, they would miss out on the opportunity to see the educational (rather than fiscal)

infrastructure of the University improved. Additionally, institutions have shown resistance to an

explicitly access/consequence-based approach, detailed above in the discussion of racial/partisan

political effects on funding policies. An approach that centers Students themselves as the subject

of inquiry may very-well overcome this barrier faster due to the fluidity of the individual over

the structural. Ultimately, institutions have the power, force, and above all, resources to deal with

the problem at hand since it quite literally entails the movement of millions of dollars (Office of

University Budget) making their involvement necessary. Instead of a mere pro/con approach, we

suggest a two-track method which asserts that there is a lack of mutual exclusivity between the
 Coming, Grand, & Haran 22

local and macro-institutional approaches in this specific context, and thus both options deserve to

be placed in conversation with each other and pursued in tandem.

The problems with Wayne State Universitys inability to graduate its black students

extend well-past what these individual approaches can grapple with. In short, this individual

modality of neglect cannot be separated from the assemblage of social factors that describe the

mass-devaluation of Black peoples lives. The struggle that this analysis entails cannot end with

the text of a mere piece of legislation, but through a repetitious insistence that we confront racial

discrimination each and every time it rears its ugly head. To take yet another step, however small

in relation to the magnitude of the problems totality, has always been an endeavor worth

pursuing.

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