The U.S. Census Bureau recently released new data on school enrollments in the United States. The statistics show that among recent high schools graduates, Blacks are more likely to enroll in higher education than non-Hispanic Whites.
In 2014, 1,686,000 non-Hispanic White Americans graduated from high school in the United States. By October of that year, 68.9 percent had enrolled in college or vocational school. In 2014, 371,000 African Americans graduated from high school. By October 2014, 72.3 percent were enrolled in college or vocational school.
If we break the data down by gender we find that 74.7 percent of Black women who graduated from high school in 2014 had enrolled in college or vocational school by October 2014. For Black men the rate was 69.5 percent.
If we look at full-time enrollments at four-year colleges only, we find that 39.1 percent of African American high school graduates were enrolled in October 2014. For 2014 non-Hispanic White high school graduates, 46.4 percent were enrolled full-time in four-year colleges by October 2014.
This is great! We still have a long way to go, however. College enrollment is a good sign, but we need to focus on retention rates. Attrition is a big issue at all colleges, where some don’t make it past a full academic year before going part-time, dropping-out, or taking time-off to fulfill other obligations. This data shows promise, but there should be more done to keep students in school and on track to graduate.