Most Ivy Leagues are universities with secondary degrees. They are calculating these numbers from the graduate school education. Most grad schools only admit those students they plan to graduate, period... It does not look good if they flunk students out in grad school. No where in the report I read indicated they only have Undergraduate numbers. So the comparion to HBCU vs. Ivy Leage numbers is unfair, even if we are talking the HBCU that have graduate programs. There are now ~10 schools: Howard, Meharry, Morehouse Med, Atlanta U., FAMU, Bethune-Cookman
and I think Virginia Union. There are a few others, but I don't remember off hand. Spelman, since I graduated there and donate all my Alumnae money to, does not have a graduate school...
But based on the total population that the Ivies have and graduation rates they claim in this report do not correlate with the numbers I have read or calculated. Yes, 8 out of 10 are graduating--but out a population of 100 where half drop out? That is an unfair correlation. This was a prospective study, after data was calculated and it was a cross-sectional. A snapshot is showing a pretty picture. But when you make the comparison to non-Af Am students, it is a poorer prognosis for self-ID'ed AfAm students.
These rates are almost 10 years old. How are they significant today? Then they were developed by a nonHBCU school. Yet, still it is used as a marketing tool against HBCU's even if it is subliminal. "We have better graduation rates if you attend here vs. Spelman..." "Blah Blah Blah..."
And people buy into this "excellent education" at a quasi Ivy League school to make a misconceived quota one must fulfill. Well, with marketing and targeting like this without full examination of the data by professionals--and yes, I am one of them, to query significant questions, you dayum right I am not trusting anything these folks say at first glance. Also, I have young people coming to my office constantly crying as to the isolation they feel while attending these schools. No, I don't do these kind of formal research projects, I do more biomedical ones, but I still educate students and am forced to do Black College Professor teaching on these same students that I know still exists in the classrooms at HBCU's...
So, when I recommend schools to high school folks, I ask them, do you want to stay home, or do you want to go away?