Should Mentoring Programs Contribute To The Retention Of African American Students In Higher Education?
Introduction
According to LaVant and Shandley’s definition (as cited in Gibson, 2014), mentoring refers to the process which intentionally exists between many people that involves a mentor acting as a guide to the mentee and makes them fit in a new environment. Many approaches and programs have been placed in ensuring that all students get the same level of higher education. However, all these approaches are limited by margination and institutionalized racism towards African American students. Mentoring has brought a new dimension and solution to such problems.
Mentoring programs are very important for the African American students in higher education because it mainly helps them to cope with the environment at school where the African-Americans are the minority group. As it is evident in most schools in the US, the African-American students are one of the groups that face discrimination due to their color. Also, Morton’s research (as cited in Gibson, 2014) showed that about half of male students who are African American get enrolled in colleges but they do not exhibit academic success. For this case, mentoring programs become resourceful tools in ensuring that such challenges are handled well by these African-American students without interfering with education due to low self-esteem. In this paper, discussion is made …show more content…
For instance, mentoring the student to set goals and supporting with knowledge of how to save, budget, and invest. This would prevents the students from having problems with retaining in school and not dropping out due to poor budgeting. When exposed to various conferences related to mentoring programs, such students are able to express and participate in open forums to express their education problems and find possible solutions for
According to LaVant and Shandley’s definition (as cited in Gibson, 2014), mentoring refers to the process which intentionally exists between many people that involves a mentor acting as a guide to the mentee and makes them fit in a new environment. Many approaches and programs have been placed in ensuring that all students get the same level of higher education. However, all these approaches are limited by margination and institutionalized racism towards African American students. Mentoring has brought a new dimension and solution to such problems.
Mentoring programs are very important for the African American students in higher education because it mainly helps them to cope with the environment at school where the African-Americans are the minority group. As it is evident in most schools in the US, the African-American students are one of the groups that face discrimination due to their color. Also, Morton’s research (as cited in Gibson, 2014) showed that about half of male students who are African American get enrolled in colleges but they do not exhibit academic success. For this case, mentoring programs become resourceful tools in ensuring that such challenges are handled well by these African-American students without interfering with education due to low self-esteem. In this paper, discussion is made …show more content…
For instance, mentoring the student to set goals and supporting with knowledge of how to save, budget, and invest. This would prevents the students from having problems with retaining in school and not dropping out due to poor budgeting. When exposed to various conferences related to mentoring programs, such students are able to express and participate in open forums to express their education problems and find possible solutions for