It's Summer Program Enrichment time!

This past Saturday, I was on a college campus in Chicago and everywhere you looked there were crowds of high school and below age kids with their parents being led around by some sort of undergraduate age docent giving them a tour. It's summer program enrichment time!

Of course, these sorts of programs are good for universities either as money makers or as in creating a pool of future students (so future money makers), but the university in question should be applauded for having so many such programs, as this is a very concrete way the academy can positively influence education in this country.

Since I have just said something nice, and this blog is partly just about me complaining, you can surmise that there is a "But..." coming, and you are right.

But I scanned these groups of students and parents and saw very few visibly Latinx students and parents and virtually zero visibly black students and parents.

Did I mention that this school is in Chicago? How is this possible? Are these programs too expensive? Are they not advertised to Black and Latinx parents? If summer enrichment programs have these demographics, why are we surprised college student demographics look the same?

I was curious about what I had observed, so I decided to go the universities website and see what they had to say about their summer programs. I have to say I was pretty shocked: plenty of pictures of containing lots of black students?!

I guess I was just wrong, and my sample was too small when I was actually on campus?

Unlikely. The photos looked real, not AI generated, but often the black students were centered in the photo, which indicates that this is what university wants you to focus on. Similar games are sometimes played with cameras at political rallies.

Another sad but fascinating observation is that the black students were almost always female. Not a brotha in sight! Very grim.

Finally, I came across one pic with a large crowd of students, which had ZERO black students, not even a female black student. Finally, an honest picture I thought to myself. It does beg the question, what is it about this program that leads it to only have white and Asian students?

In my experience the more "high end" and academic the summer enrichment program is, the less likely it is to  have black and Latinx students. For example, math and computer camps tend to be almost all white and Asian.

In fact, it's depressing, but I would go so far as to say that most of the programs for black and brown kids tend to be of the "here, why don't you play with this ball" variety and are mainly geared towards trying to keep us from "causing trouble."

This topic is dear to my heart for one simple reason: I participated in an elite math summer program (the Ross program) when I was in high school, and if I hadn't gone I probably wouldn't have become a mathematician. I was the only black kid in the program when I went and the only reason I heard about it was because my younger and smarter white math nerd friend told me about it.  I actually did not hear about it from any teacher.

The bottom line is that all sorts of academic enrichment programs are going on for all ages and it is very likely that you will not be told about them if you are underrepresented. Even if you become aware of them, it is quite possible that they will not be affordable. Nonetheless, it is vital that you acquire the knowledge in these programs when you are young if you want to be competitive when you go to high school and college.

In fact, when I told my parents that I wanted to attend the Ross program in the upcoming summer, they told me to get a job. I did.