The U.S. Census Bureau recently released new data on school enrollments in the United States. The numbers show that 21.9 percent of all non-Hispanic White Americans over the age of 3 in October 2014 were enrolled in school at some level. For Black Americans over the age of 3, 30.2 percent of the total population was enrolled in school.
Contrary to the widely held stereotype that Black men are avoiding education, Black males over the age of 3 are more likely to be enrolled in school than Black females. However, if we restrict the data to show only those ages 18 or 19, we see that 52.7 percent of Black women were enrolled in college in October 2014 compared to 28.4 percent of Black men in that narrow age group.
White women ages 18 and 19 were only slightly more likely to be enrolled in college in October 2014 than Black women. But for men the gender gap was large. As stated earlier, 28.4 percent of Black men ages 18 and 19 in October 2014 were enrolled in college. The figure for White men in that age group was 45.0 percent.
