Oberlin #1 in Black Enterprise

In the January 1999 issue of Black Enterprise magazine, Oberlin College ranked first among liberal arts colleges (excluding historically black colleges) for providing the best environment for African-American students.

The rankings, which were compiled by DayStar Research and Black Enterprise, considered academic and social ratings from a survey sent to African-American administrators and faculty members, as well as African-American undergraduate percentages.

DayStar chose to have a separate category for historically black colleges and universities because they would have dominated a joint list. Before being grouped into the four categories a generic list was compiled. This ranked Spelman College 1st, Morehouse College 2nd, Florida A&M University 3rd and Oberlin 12th.

The only national non-black colleges which ranked ahead of Oberlin were Stanford University and Georgetown University.

College sophomore Baderinwa Lumumba-Umoja, a member of Abusua, said the rankings are understandable in context. Lumumba-Umoja maintained that Oberlin has a variety of support systems for its African-American students, including Afrikan Heritage House, Abusua, Sisterhood and Brotherhood.

Oberlin is known for its history of activism and acceptance of African-Americans. However, Lumumba-Umoja said it is necessary to assess the institution in and of itself to "address issues of hostility and racism that black students encounter."

Thomas La Veist, associate professor at John Hopkins University and CEO of DayStar Research, wanted to conduct a survey to provide African-American students and their parents with some guidelines as to which colleges/universities provide optimal environments for growth and achievement for African-American collegians.

The survey included all accredited four-year institutions with an African-American student body of at least 1.5 percent or other schools of significant interest to African-American students. The 987 schools were then divided into five categories, including national liberal arts colleges, national universities, regional universities, regional liberal arts colleges and historically black colleges.

DayStar then compiled a list of 1,077 African-American professionals in higher education, including college presidents, faculty members and admissions administrators employed by the 987 schools.

These African-American professionals were asked to rate each school in the same category as their institution on a scale which ranged from "strongly recommended" to "strongly not recommended." The actual ratings were computed according to a weighed model that gave assigned values to four numbers: the average academic and social ratings from the survey, the percentage of African-American undergraduates in the student body in 1996-97, and the percentage of African-American students in the 1997-98 graduating class.

Deborah McNish, Interim Dean of Student Life and Services, was one of the professionals who completed the survey. She said she is skeptical about the results. She said the survey gave little information and guidelines to the participants. McNish maintains that Oberlin's high ranking is understandable considering how Oberlin challenges its students and how open it is to being challenged.

McNish maintained that Oberlin pushes students to understand others and themselves. She believes that any place where students can do such things are "always great learning environments."

College junior Maya Porter believes that the DayStar rating is an objective evaluation and maintains that Oberlin is "not a bad place for black students." Porter believes that the wealth of one's college experience does not lie in the institution itself but in what the students make of it.