ABSTRACT
Previous research has shown that matriculation in Black versus White schools makes a huge difference for Black students in terms of adjustment, performance, mentoring, aspirations and future economic well-being. HBCUs have surfaced in the STEM literature for facilitating the development of Black scientists. This study has also shown that HBCUs offer Black students an independent pathway to success in engineering. The purpose of this analysis was to examine the differences between Black students who attended Black and White engineering schools in performance, program participation, measures of adjustment, and the predictors of three measures of “success.” As in previous studies, Blacks in Black engineering schools reported better academic adjustment on several measures, but students in White engineering schools had greater access to scholarship support and undergraduate research opportunities. The success factors, that predicted three measures of “success,” were very similar for students in both sets of institutions—with program participation accounting for 66.7% of the predictive factors, and with 53.8% of these were either internship involvement (30.7%) or undergraduate research participation (23.1%). Despite differences in institutional experiences, there were few differences in what facilitates success in engineering.
