Minority students are more likely to be successful in a white-majority college than a college oriented toward minority students, according to a Chicago researcher.

However, some NIU minority resources directors disagree with the study, released last week by the University of Chicago.

According to the study, graduation rates for minority students who attend white-dominant colleges and universities are about 6 percent higher than the graduation rates from minority-dominant schools.

“That’s an unbelievable figure. I don’t know how he (Eric M. Camburn, who conducted the U. of C. study) worked that out,” said Dr. Admasu Zike, director of the Center for Black Studies. “It just cannot be true.”

Although he did not have the data available, Zike said all the studies he has seen on the subject indicate the data to be just the opposite.

He said there is more support for minority students in a minority-oriented college, and students who attend those schools usually feel more comfortable and welcome than students who attend white-majority schools.

George Guitierrez, director for University Resources for Latinos, agrees.

Guitierrez said he has a book by Jacqueline Fleming called “Blacks in College,” which also indicates that “blacks do better in educating black students than do white institutions.”

Guitierrez said although he did not want to generalize all minority students, “in general, I agree with that (what Fleming found in her book).”

More than 2,700 minority students were enrolled at NIU during the 1989 fall semester, said Roxanne Gunser of NIU’s Institutional Research Center. Total enrollment for the 1989 fall semester was 24,443.

Of that number, about 1,139 students were black, 513 were Hispanic and 743 students were Asian. The remaining students included 45 American Indians and about 330 students who marked “other” or are non-resident aliens, Gunser said.

Students who marked “other” might have done so because designating race is optional on NIU enrollment applications, Gunser said.

Camburn’s study also found the college dropout rate somehow is affected by the dominant race of the student’s high school, but the reason behind the findings was not explained in the data.