What Works? A Qualitative Examination of the Factors Related to the Academic Success of African American Males at a Predominantly White College in the South

Abstract

Our study examined the factors related to the retention/academic success of African American males at a mid-sized, regional, predominantly white university in the south. The selected university has an African American male graduation rate, of approximately twenty-three percent, which is thirteen percentage points below the national Black male average. Feagin’s (1998) theory of cumulative discrimination was used to analyze in-depth interview responses from fifteen African American males who were selected using convenience sampling.