A new report from the U.S. Department of Education offers preliminary data on higher education enrollments in the fall of 2013. The report includes data on all students enrolled at Title IV institutions. These are educational entities that are permitted to participate in federal student financial assistance programs.
In 2013, there was a total of 20,847,787 students enrolled in high education. Of these 2,790,255 were Black or African American. Thus, Blacks made up 13.4 percent of all enrollments in higher education.
The same report issued a year ago found that in the fall of 2012 there were 2,864,723 African Americans enrolled in Title IV institutions in the United States. A year earlier, the same report listed 2,966,463 African Americans enrolled in these institutions. Thus in 2013, there were 176,208 fewer African American students enrolled in higher education than was the case in 2011.
In 2013, Blacks were 12.3 percent of all students enrolled in state-operated colleges and universities and 11.2 percent of total enrollments at private, nonprofit institutions. But Blacks made up 25.6 percent of all students enrolled at for-profit institutions of higher education.
PLEASE, do an article discussing the unethical ways that for-profit colleges prey on low-income students (i.e students of color) and Veterans in an effort to get their Federal aid and subsequently land thousands of unqualified Black and Hispanic students in deep debt. The numbers are staggering and we MUST do something about it because it can easily turn into yet another disparaging educational inequality between the haves and have nots.
I so much agree with Karimah Crosson. I work at a community college in Transfer Services and it saddens me the number of students who come with transcripts from these for profit colleges thinking that the credits will transfer into an associates or bachelor degree. I’ve had students to literally cry in front of me when I tell them the credits are not transferrable. Lets not talk about the students who go into horrible debt after attending these schools. What do they have to show for it? Debt and credits that don’t transfer.
As long as it gets more and more difficult to obtain the fiscal resources to attend college, minority enrollment will continue to decline! . . .