It also is significantly higher than the University of Pennsylvania (8%), Villanova (5%), and Haverford (5.7%), all private.īut other Pennsylvania public colleges have enrolled more Black students in the last decade. Still today Temple’s share of Black students (13.8%) is more than double that of Pennsylvania State University and the University of Pittsburgh, which are partly funded by state taxpayers. Temple traditionally enrolled more Black students than other colleges. The 2020 Census data show that 61% of the North Philadelphia residents within Temple’s core area earn median incomes of less than half the city’s median of $47,474 a year. Temple’s expansion brought tens of millions of dollars for economic development to North Philadelphia, in addition to gentrification, though not broadly distributed wealth.
Liacouras’ successor, the hard-driving David Adamany, raised academic standards. Peter Liacouras, the university’s president through the 1980s and 1990s, focused on developing the “Temple Town” concept, demarcating it as an upwardly mobile academic enclave within North Philadelphia neighborhoods. Gladfelter, who became Temple’s president in 1959, “believed that urban universities were duty-bound to help solve their neighborhoods’ economic and social problems,” James Hilty, a Temple history professor, wrote in his 307-page book on the university published in 2010.īut others at Temple harbored loftier ambitions: a “Harvard on the Delaware,” Hilty also wrote. Over time, the working-class neighborhoods that fed the city’s textile mills around Temple fell on hard times. When a group of Philadelphians asked Conwell to open a medical school because the ones that existed excluded Blacks, women, Jews, and immigrants, Conwell readily agreed.
“Arise, you millions of Philadelphians, trust in God and man, and believe in great opportunities that are right here.” “I say to you that you have acres of diamonds in Philadelphia where you now live,” he said in a speech he gave more than 5,000 times. “Temple had almost lulled itself into a sense of complacency that because we are quite literally in the city of Philadelphia and essentially a university that is part of one of the most historic African American communities in the United States that perhaps we were more ethnically diverse than we really were.” “Temple dropped the ball for a period of time,” Abbott said. Trends over the last few years show a declining enrollment of white undergrads with modestly growing numbers of Black and mixed-race students. Seventeen percent of the most recent freshman class are Black, and more than 45% are students of color, up from 31% five years ago, he said. Since he was hired in 2018, Abbott said he has taken steps to diversify his staff, increase outreach to Philadelphia public schools and add programs to enroll more students from the surrounding neighborhood.
Still, Shawn Abbott, Temple’s vice provost for admissions, financial aid, and enrollment management, acknowledged that leading up to 2017, African American enrollment “slid to levels that were and are at odds with Temple’s reputation as a popular destination for Black students.” But Abbott said those numbers reflect more of a recruitment failure than discrimination. Harrison argued that Temple’s Black student population has always been on par with or ahead of Pennsylvania’s overall Black student population, ages 18 to 24, and considerably higher than that of many other schools. “And you owe it to the alums to maintain a high value of their degree.” “As other schools become more competitive, you have to stay with the game,” said Valerie Harrison, Temple’s vice president for public affairs. Officials also argued that Temple has had to adopt higher admissions standards to stay academically competitive and that it made no sense to accept students who could not do the work and then drop out with debt. The comparison over time understates its Black enrollment, they say, because it fails to take into account mixed-race students, a new racial category in the last decade.īut even if all 940 students in the mixed-race category were added in 2017 - and not all of them are Black - Temple’s share still fell considerably, to 15.7%, data show. Officials at Temple, which hired its first Black president last summer, say their commitment to diversity has never waned. Also, Temple’s $30,500 price tag for in-state students places it beyond the means of many students of color in a state with one of the nation’s weakest funding formulas for higher education.
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