Black Student College Graduation Rates Remain Low, But Modest Progress Begins to Show

Headnote

Nationwide, the black student graduation rate remains at a dismally low 42 percent. But the rate has improved by three percentage points over the past two years. More encouraging is the fact that over the past seven years the black student graduation rate has improved at almost all of the nation's highest-ranked universities.

ON PAGE 11 of this issue of JBHE we report the encouraging news that African-American enrollments at the vast majority of our nation's highestranked colleges and universities have shown significant improvement over the past quartercentury.

But a more important statistical measure of the performance of blacks in higher education is how many black students throughout the nation are completing school and earning a college degree. Department of Education data reveals that, as expected, black students who earn a four-year college degree have incomes that are substantially higher than blacks who have only some college experience but have not earned a degree. Most important, blacks who complete a four-year college education have a median income that is near parity with similarly educated whites.

According to the most recent statistics, the nationwide college graduation rate for black students stands at an appallingly low rate of 42 percent.* This figure is 20 percentage points below the 62 percent rate for white students. Here, the only positive news we have to report is that over the past two years the black student graduation rate has improved by three percentage points.

Black Women Outpace Black Men in College Completions

In each of the three years from 1998 through 2000 there was a one percentage point decline in the graduation rate for black men. But for the past four years the graduation rate for black men improved by one percentage point and now stands at 35 percent. Over the past 15 years black men have improved their graduation rate from 28 percent to 35 percent.

This year the college graduation rate for black women rose by one percentage point to 46 percent. And over the past decade and a half, the graduation rates for black women have shown strong and steady gains. Turning in a powerful performance, black women have improved their college completion rate from 34 percent in 1990 to 46 percent in 2005.

Graduation rates...