A Statistical Portrait of Recent African American College Graduates

New statistics from the Department of Education offer a snapshot of African Americans who earned a bachelor’s degree during the 2007-08 academic year.

• More than 67 percent of all African Americans earning bachelor’s degree were women. For Whites, 56.4 percent of all bachelor’s degrees were awarded to women.

• Slightly more than one half of all African Americans earning bachelor’s degrees were 24 years old or older. More than 29 percent were older than 30.

• More than 64 percent of all Black graduates reported that they had received a Pell Grant during their college careers. For Whites, 30.7 percent of graduates reported that they had received a Pell Grant.

• About 15 percent of all bachelor’s degrees earned by African Americans were in STEM fields. This is only slightly less than the percentage of Whites who received their degrees in STEM disciplines. Blacks were twice as likely as Whites to receive their degree in computer science. More than one third of all bachelor’s degrees awarded to African Americans were in the field of business.

• One year after graduating from college, 58.6 percent of African Americans were unmarried and had no dependents. Nearly a quarter were married and 16.4 percent were married and had dependents.

• One year after college, 56.6 percent of Black graduates were employed full time in one job, almost identical to the rate for Whites. More than 11 percent of African American college graduates held down two or more jobs. Nearly 13 percent were unemployed and 3.4 percent were enrolled in another degree program in higher education.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Get the JBHE Weekly Bulletin

Receive our weekly email newsletter delivered to your inbox

Latest News

Recent Books of Interest to African American Scholars

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education regularly publishes a list of new books that may be of interest to our readers. The books included are on a wide variety of subjects and present many different points of view.

Nonwhite Patients Are Significantly More Likely to Have Preventative Care Insurance Claims Denied

Scholars from the University of Toronto have found non-White patients are nearly twice as likely as White patients to have an insurance claim denied. On average, they also pay more out-of-pocket costs when their claims are denied.

Leslie Rodriguez-McClellon Named Seventeenth President of Arkansas Baptist College

Prior to her new role, Dr. Rodriguez-McClellon was the vice president of community relations and governmental affairs at Saint Augustine's University in Raleigh. She has a robust background in higher education, including service as the first African American president of Rochester Community and Technical College in Minnesota.

Black Men Remain Underrepresented in the Physician Assistant Profession

From 2012 to 2021, the number of applicants to physician assistant and associate programs grew by 64 percent. However, the share of Black male applicants to these programs remained around 2 percent over this same time period.

Featured Jobs