The University of Georgia reports that African American women now have the highest graduation rate of any demographic group at the university. The Office of Institutional Diversity at the university reports that for students who entered the university in 2008, 92.8 percent of all African American women had either earned their degrees within six years or had transferred to another educational institution. The overall graduation/transfer out rate at the university is 84.6 percent.
If we consider only those students who entered the university in 2008 and earned their degrees at the University of Georgia within six years, we find that 86 percent of both Black and White women received bachelor’s degrees by 2014. The graduation rate for Black men was 71 percent, 15 percentage points lower than the rate for Black women.
Jazmine Avery, president of the Multiracial Student Organization at the University of Georgia, told the university’s student newspaper that “I think [African-American females] have such a high graduation rate because we’ve never been anything less than hard working, contrary to stereotypes or popular belief. I think we are all just tired of being told who we should be, and are now taking the opportunity to demand more from life, and the first step is through higher education.”
