There have been a great number of studies done on racial disparities in access to college and on graduation rates of those who do attend college. But a new report from the Center for American Progress finds that there are large racial disparities that exist even among those who complete college.
For example:
* Blacks are far more likely than Whites to have attended and graduated for-profit colleges and less likely to have attended four-year public or nonprofit institutions.
* Blacks also are more likely than Whites to have graduated from institutions that have less money to spend on offering a quality education.
* Blacks are more likely than Whites to graduate from institutions that have lower average SAT scores, lower faculty salaries, lower retention rates for first-year students, and higher student-faculty ratios.
* Blacks are significantly underrepresented in important fields such as engineering, mathematics and statistics, and the physical sciences.
* White students are more than twice as likely as Black students to graduate with degrees in physical sciences, mathematics, and statistics.
* If Black and Hispanic bachelor’s degree recipients were as likely to major in engineering as White students, this country would have produced 20,000 more engineers from 2013 through 2015.
* White men earn bachelor’s degrees in engineering at more than 11 times the rate of Black women.
The authors of the report conclude that “finding a path to equity in the types of credentials students get is not only a moral imperative for this country but is also crucial to its future success.”
The full report, The Neglected College Race Gap: Racial Disparities Among College Completers, may be downloaded by clicking here.
Equal outcomes is a pipe dream. There is a one standard deviation gap in the mean IQs between blacks and whites. This gap is partially due to genetics and is replicable in the tests the military uses for recruits, SATs and even exams to be police or firefighters.