Racial Differences in School Enrollments and High School Graduation Rates

New data from the U.S. Census Bureau offers a snapshot of the high school graduation rate status and enrollments of the American population in school in October 2020. At that time, there were 28,983,000 African Americans who were high school graduates. They made up 89.8 percent of the Black population ages 18 and over. There were nearly 3 million African American adults over the age of 18 who were not high school graduates. There were more than 900,000 African Americans over the age of 65 who had not graduated from high school. They made up about one sixth of all African Americans over the age of 65.

For non-Hispanic White Americans in October 2020, there were 149,585,000 high school graduates. They made up 94.8 percent of the non-Hispanic White population ages 18 and over.

The data also shows that in October 2020, 26.5 percent of all African Americans over the age of 3 were enrolled in school. For non-Hispanic White Americans, only 19.8 percent of the population age 3 and over was enrolled in school.

For the population ages 30 to 49, a great percentage of the African American population was enrolled in school than was the case for non-Hispanic White Americans. But for those over the age of 50, the percentage of non-Hispanic  Whites who were enrolled in school was higher than for African Americans over the age of 50.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Get the JBHE Weekly Bulletin

Receive our weekly email newsletter delivered to your inbox

Latest News

Recent Books of Interest to African American Scholars

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education regularly publishes a list of new books that may be of interest to our readers. The books included are on a wide variety of subjects and present many different points of view.

Nonwhite Patients Are Significantly More Likely to Have Preventative Care Insurance Claims Denied

Scholars from the University of Toronto have found non-White patients are nearly twice as likely as White patients to have an insurance claim denied. On average, they also pay more out-of-pocket costs when their claims are denied.

Leslie Rodriguez-McClellon Named Seventeenth President of Arkansas Baptist College

Prior to her new role, Dr. Rodriguez-McClellon was the vice president of community relations and governmental affairs at Saint Augustine's University in Raleigh. She has a robust background in higher education, including service as the first African American president of Rochester Community and Technical College in Minnesota.

Black Men Remain Underrepresented in the Physician Assistant Profession

From 2012 to 2021, the number of applicants to physician assistant and associate programs grew by 64 percent. However, the share of Black male applicants to these programs remained around 2 percent over this same time period.

Featured Jobs