Too Many Excuses For Minority College Students

MANY years ago, when I was teaching at Howard University, a black institution in Washington, D.C., a very dispirited young man came to my office after he had received a ``D'' on an examination in my economics class.

``I don't know how I could have done so badly, Mr. Sowell,'' he said, with a sincerely puzzled look on his face. ``I studied so hard before the exam. Do you know, I studied for TWO HOURS for that exam!''

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

The student looked even more puzzled when I told him that two hours was just a warmup period to begin some serious studying. His eyes widened when I said that I spent more than two hours preparing a one-hour lecture on a subject I had taught before - and had studied for 10 years before that.

Later, this incident made me think back to my own student days, when I was a freshman at Howard. I always thought of myself as a hard-working student, and so did others around me. But after I transferred to Harvard at the beginning of my sophomore year, my roommate there said to me one day:

``When are you going to stop goofing off, Tom, and get some work done?''

I was stung by the accusation. Goofing off! What was he talking about?

When my first midterm grades arrived, they were half D's and half F's. What would have been good work, by standards I was used to, was considered goofing off at Harvard. A faculty adviser called me to his office and told me, in effect, that I would have to shape up or ship out.

I began to pay attention to how my roommate worked. Nort was a mathematics major, and it was not unusual for him to start struggling with his assignment in the mornings, right after returning from class. I could hear him muttering and cursing under his breath as he worked over the problems.

At noon, we often had lunch with our third roommate, Ralph, a physics major with an almost straight-A average. They would sometimes talk about math principles that might give a clue as to how to attack some tough problem.

In the afternoon, the assault on the math problems continued. A whole page of calculations might be crumpled up in anger and thrown into the wastebasket, after it became clear that the particular approach led into a blind alley. Somewhere around midafternoon, Nort would cry out:

``WAIT A MINUTE! I've got it!''

That usually meant that he had finally penetrated to what the real problem was, and now it was just a matter of turning out a few equations that led to the answer. He too was an almost straight-A student, and today is chairman of the math department at a prestigious Eastern college.

Between my grades and my roommates, I realized that my work habits had to change. Studying meant burning the midnight oil until I mastered my assignment. If it took until 2 or 3 a.m., that was what it took.

Today, when a master of ceremonies introduces me as someone who graduated with honors from Harvard, I think back to those days, and the introduction seems a little misleading. It is true that I graduated with honors - but only after a lot of dust had settled.

Many students who come from schools with lower standards, or from families where no one has ever gone to college, do not really understand what is required for first-rate work at a first-rate institution.

In an earlier era, it was understood that they would simply have to shape up or ship out. Most of them shaped up.

Today, on too many campuses, there are too many people offering too many excuses and too many copouts for minority students. Their academic problems are blamed on ``cultural bias'' in the courses, ``the white power structure,'' or a lack of ``role models.'' Nobody has the guts to tell them to shape up or ship out. The net result is that more of them end up shipping out.

Thomas Sowell, an economist, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif. His latest book is ``Preferential Policies: An International Perspective.''