Melissa Burdette has a simple solution to help more of her fellow minority students to graduate from Kansas University.

“Give more financial aid, because a lot of people can’t afford to stay long enough,” said Burdette, a Kansas City, Kan., freshman who is black.

Whether because of money or other reasons, minority students at KU are 15.8 percent less likely to graduate than their white peers.

While many schools face gaps in graduation rates between white and minority students, the gap is wider at KU than it is at universities similar to KU, according to information compiled by the Education Trust and now available at a Web site, www.collegeresults.org.

The report aims to put a new focus on improving university services to improve graduation rates.

“For far too long, we have blamed low graduation rates only on the students,” said Kevin Carey, director of policy research at the Education Trust. “This sort of thinking has led us to believe that there is nothing that colleges and universities could do to help more students graduate.”

KU officials say they’re working to improve the situation.

“We have the core pieces here,” said Kathryn Tuttle, associate vice provost for student success.

KU’s rates

According to the report, KU lags behind its peer universities in several graduation areas.

Overall, 58.1 percent of students who entered as freshmen in 1997 had graduated by 2003. That is better than the national average of 56.9 percent, but ranked KU 30th among its 50 peer schools — such as Kansas State, Missouri, Iowa State and similar schools outside the Big 12 — identified by the Educational Trust.

Other graduation rates included:

• Only 11 of 50 peer schools have a larger gap between graduation rates of white and minority students.
• Among minority groups, American Indian students had the lowest graduation rate at 40 percent, but that ranked KU 24th among its 50 peers. The lowest ranking was among black students, which had a graduation rate of 41.1 percent, a number that ranked 37th among peers.
• Women had a 61.5 percent graduation rate at KU, more than the 54.3 percent graduation rate among men. Nationally, the gender gap is 59.6 percent graduation rate for women, 53.6 percent for men.

KU plans

Tuttle said KU already had begun its push to improve graduation rates by improving retention rates between freshman and sophomore years.

Efforts include early identification of students who are at-risk academically, expanding the Freshman-Sophomore Advising Center and encouraging freshmen to take a university orientation seminar course.

The university has reached out to minority students, Tuttle said, through Hawk Link. The program, organized by the Office of Multicultural Affairs, guides minority students through orientation, advising and tutoring, and introduces them to multicultural programs on campus.

Now, she said, KU is looking to focus on sophomore-to-junior-year retention rates. That will include giving students more help in choosing their majors.

“We’re trying to work harder to … make sure all students are benefiting from those things,” Tuttle said. “We need to put the pieces together.”

For Casey Gunther, a junior from Columbia, Md., who said he is half-black, the issue in closing the racial graduation gap comes down to giving students aspirations for the future.

“KU needs to show there’s a place for minorities in the work world — that there’s more than just white corporate America — and students should set goals,” he said.

— KU student Sam Amburgey contributed to this report.