The GRI is your friend. Granted, it’s not the definitive answer detailing the incidence of deafness among the general population, but due to a paucity of comparable statistics found elsewhere, this’ll have to do. :) (Source: gri.gallaudet.edu)

Take a look at the 1999-2000 Regional and National Summary of Deaf demographics, especially in the 0-5 age range. This is the pre-lingual Deaf category, and this numbered 5,247 Deaf children nationwide.

Now, check out the 2004-2005 Regional and National Summary on Deaf demographics, again centering in this same age range, that of pre-lingual children. This time, the numbers have gone down to 4,663 Deaf children nationwide.

From 1999 to 2005, Deaf America has lost roughly 584 pre-lingual Deaf children. But this is only one-half of the equation; In this time span, America’s population has increased.

According to the decinnial (sp?) census data (P12 - Sex By Age), the total combined population of children under 5 years of age for both sexes are: 19,175,798 children.
(Source: http://www.census.gov - However, they use dynamic databases, and I’m not sure how to make a direct link.)

Dividing that figure by the 1999 GRI demographic report comes to a rough estimate of a miniscule incidence figure of .000273 of Deaf children among the mainstream population. Or, roughly speaking, 2.73 Deaf children per 10,000 children for the U.S.

As for the 2005 census, I was only able to get a rough estimate on the pre-lingual population, as they did not break it down by age or sex. According to the estimated census data, America grew 5.3% from 2000-2005. (Dividing the total population figures of 296,507,061 from 281,421,906)

Taking this 5.3% increase with the 2000 American pre-lingual population of 19,175,798 children comes to a total estimate of 20,203,684 children for 2005.

Again, dividing the number of the 2005 Deaf pre-lingual population against the 2005 estimated pre-lingual population comes to this incidence figure of .000230. Or roughly 2.3 Deaf children per 10,000 children in the pre-lingual population.

In five years, Deaf America, among its pre-lingual population, has seen a .000043 decrease in incidence. Granted, it may not sound much. I’m glad I did this ad hoc research, and I’m probably a little bit off in doing so. The exercise has been illuminating.

However, I don’t need to see such statistics as these, as I wonder how GRI collects its demographic data; Historically, the incidence rates were 1 Deaf person per 1,000 people. Yet, if GRI’s statistics were to be the gold standard, it would appear that there are only 2.3-2.73 Deaf people per 10,000 people, a significant deviation.

Rather, I can see lowered incidence figures via anecdotal observation in the school where I currently teach. There’s only under 20 Deaf students in the program, compared with 60+ such students during the Rubella boom of the 1970’s.

And this is what Gallaudet, RIT/NTID, CSUN, and other Deaf programs have to face for the foreseeable future and have to adapt/adjust.

You can find answers to some of your questions in NTID’s annual report that is available at http://www.ntid.rit.edu/media/.....t2006.pdf.

I will give you some references. Pages 54 to 56 give the complete breakdown into all majors. 764 students or 61.2% are in NTID programs; 484 students or 38.7% are in RIT programs.

Page 80 tells you the level of academic skills of the entering students based on ACT score. As you can see from the table, those who have high ACT score are able to enter RIT programs upon arrival while those who have low ACT score must go through NTID programs. Taking these numbers with the mean ACT scores on page 43, it is easy to conjecture that some students have difficulties in developing their reading and writing skills and if they are not able to raise their skill levels to satisfy the requirements of RIT programs, they cannot go beyond the associate programs. It may sound cruel but that is what RIT expects before accepting the students into the bachelor programs.

Page 87 and few pages after it tell what kinds of jobs that the students obtained after graduation.

The annual report contains a wealth of quantitative data that probably will answer many of your questions.

I want to digress a bit. The law (20 U.S.C. 4354) required NTID to submit annual report every year. The same law also required Gallaudet University to submit annual report but I could not find it on its website. If you know where it is, can you let all of us know the location?

Joseph Pietro Riolo
josephpietrojeungriolo@gmail.com

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain.

I attended both sister universities such as NTID/RIT and Gallaudet University since summer 1999. Both have different approaches with education and campus climate. I agreed with all above of your comments in regarding of retention, employment, and other matters.
From my own personal perspectives, both schools give me rich experience by learning the education and social life. Yet, I enrolled both when I was older student in between 35 and 40’s. I wish I could attend either of them when I was young. However, I was too young to be stupid and to play around. Then I pursued my acting career in Los Angeles in mid 20 something. Eventually, I realized it was very tough to compete with others and had through the financial situation. Of course, I do love acting very much including the filmmaking effort when I was a student at UCLA Extension. While I lived in L.A., I worked with Deaf Arts Council, my expertise involves soliciting the donations from the vendors, who were willing to donate food, arts and supplies, filmmaking supplies, etc to support the filmmaking production camp for deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing children and youths under Multimedia Arts Camp in mid-1990’s in Hollywood. For reason, I have not adequate in my talent for the office environment. I decided to return to school to take academic courses to improve my education that would apply for office jobs in elsewhere.

Subsequently, I changed my career to public relations/public affairs. I went to Santa Monica College in Southern California. I found myself very frustrating and challenge in hearing classroom with sign language interpreter. I realized that I missed something important information from hearing instructors such as English and Math except film class that I truly enjoyed to watch and to provide the critical classroom discussion. One day, I met a good friend, who happened to be NTID/RIT alumni. Thereafter, I encounter this person, my rationale influenced my thoughts about going to NTID/RIT. I began to apply to enroll. In the winter time, I visited RIT campus to get an introduction preview and a city of Rochester. Of sudden, I love this town which compared to the largest metropolitan. It is bizarre to feel very calmly about Rochester with the beautiful wintry season and country scenes outside the small city. It reflected me of the early America (colonial) history experience. In few months later, I received the acceptance letter from NTID Administration and my reaction was thrilled. When I arrived into the campus for Summer Vestibule Program (SVP) in 1999, the campus atmosphere gave me great and warm hospitality with blissful and bright.

For the next four years, most instructors were very dedicated for their best and work-hard effort to support our students to accomplish the technology education. I admired them very much and influenced my great motivation to study harder. By collecting my tools from the classroom, it benefited my knowledge and ability to work on the office environment including the understanding of technology. The foundation was very essential benefit for me to build. Without the foundation, I can’t have the skill of technology knowledge to use the computer. Thanks to NTID for their contribution to me! Then I was hoping to enroll RIT for Professional Technology in Communication. Unfortunately, my English was not enough to demonstrate and to compatible what the liberal arts department’s highest expectation. Yet, I wish I could have read books and write a lot when I was very younger. It was very disappointment. I decided to transfer to Gallaudet University and my goal to get bachelor’s degree for job opportunities.

When I enrolled Gallaudet University, I had homesick from NTID/RIT. During my Gallaudet days, I visited the tiger land often. I almost decided to withdraw from Gallaudet in a week during New Student Orientation. My academic advisor at NTID advised me to stay on Bison land. Time flew fast indeed. Gradually, my life adjusted slowly. By my graduation of last year, I realized I love Gallaudet so much with my warm and rich experience on insightful of classroom discussion among the students, social life, and collaborated working with few wonderful instructors and my favorite academic advisor to endure my academic excellence. The torch blessed my heart to reflect what NTID and Gallaudet provide me.

Absolutely, Gallaudet University needs to improve their academic education to restore for primary students to accomplish for job opportunities to unlock. I wish to see the expansion of beautification campus such as campus apartments, mini-convenience stores and college town nearby. I pray that Gallaudet administration will continue to listen and to focus what students need.

Thank you for bringing up the topic discussion related to Gallaudet University.

Nick Vera

Does anyone have a breakdown on how many deaf students at NTID receive AA degrees, BA degrees, etc, and furthermore, what disciplines those degrees are offered in? Because if Gallaudet offers a BA in English or Philosophy and a student has a hard time finding a job, it can be argued that not a lot of employers are looking for a candidate with a BA in philosophy right now, but plenty of them need candidates with AA degrees in Office _______. Thus it’s possible that 93% statistic isn’t only due to a better education or a better program.

Other point of consideration: while we’re analyzing NTID/Gallaudet/CSUN like this, should we not be analyzing also smaller programs? David did mention “sizeable,” after all. So if you take UW-M, which currently has X number of deaf students, what are the literacy rates (among the deaf students only)? I’ll bet you’re going to find students there with literacy problems. What are the graduation rates? I’ll bet you’re going to find a lot of students who dropped out. But the catch is that the smaller a program is, the less it’s responsible for graduating its students… the OVERALL UNIVERSITY is what becomes responsible for graduating those students. But what if they don’t? What if they simply cut them? Then we’d be bashing larger Deaf programs for something huge universities with successful overall graduation rates possibly fail to do all the time.

Gallaudet’s Mission (WAD’s grade B-)
It is a lloonngg mission statement. It can be compressed easily. I do not see much focus on students to obtain career goals after graduating from the university.
http://www.gallaudet.edu/x237.xml

NTID’s Mission (WAD’s grade A-)
It is to the point and clear defined. I would omit either “outstanding” or “state-of-the-art” as it is not necessary.
http://www.ntid.rit.edu/VPandDean/mission.php

CSUN’s NCOD mission (WAD’s grade D-)
I haven’t seen any mission like this before. Too many boring words are used. It requires a lot of revisions.
http://ncod.csun.edu/programs/mission.html

I’m interested in this information. Can you link to a website where it says that the incidence of deafness is plummeting? How much has it plummeted each year?

I am aware of the drop-off in the incidence of deafness since the rubella bulge and could probably understand further decrease as other illnesses are cured in time before the onset of deafness.

Looks like NTID and Gallaudet are in the ’same boat’ as far as enrollment, retention, and graduating Deaf students are concerned. I can see problems that may appear in enrollment/recruiting, as there’s not a lot of Deaf students, and incidence of Deafness in the general population continues to plummet.

But, retaining these students and graduating them remain a huge source of concern. I can understand that the incidence of Deafness are beyond the control of these institutions, but this issue is squarely upon their shoulders. I’m all for more creative solutions where we can retain these students and graduate more of them, on par with regular, established academic institutions of comparable size.

That said, I think NTID and Gallaudet are about equal in this arena. It would be nice to see actual statistics as to which institution has better retention/graduation rates for the past five years or so.

Another thing… And this doesn’t appear to be mentioned at all in the ExpectMore.gov’s reports; What about the job outlook facing these graduates, and how well do these respective institutions prepare them for the employment market. It does the Federal Government no good in funding these institutions, when its graduates continue to face a difficult employment climate upon graduating.

As for CSUN, maybe they can voluntarily give out some information about their enrollment, retention, graduation, and job figures for the public to digest. Apart from that, I’m afraid that some sleuthing may be needed to pore over public documents to find this information, if CSUN ever bothers to separate such information in the first place in its public reporting.

That report is a little too old and I am waiting for the new report.

CSUN did not have a separate federal appropriation for itself like Gallaudet University and NTID do. That is why ExpectMore.gov does not include CSUN.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
josephpietrojeungriolo@gmail.com

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain.