The Aftermath of the Supreme Court Ruling Outlawing Race-Sensitive Admissions

Black enrollments at many of the nation's highest ranked universities are down significantly. But some top schools have been able to maintain a diverse student body despite the Supreme Court ban of race-sensitive admissions.

HBCUs Have Experienced a Sharp Decline in Black Male Student Enrollment

In 1976, Black men accounted for 38 percent of all HBCU students. As of 2022, that rate has dropped to 26 percent. Furthermore, this share of Black male students is now roughly equal to the share of non-Black HBCU students.

Howard University Receives Record-Breaking 36,000 Applicants for Class of 2028

The class of 2028 applicant pool at Howard University increased by 4,000 applications compared to last year's class of 2027. This year, the university's acceptance rate was roughly 31 percent, down five percentage points from last year.

Enrollments Are Up in Higher Education With Black Increases Outpacing Those of Whites

For African Americans, more than 1.6 million students were enrolled as undergraduates in the fall of 2023, up 0.7 percent from the previous year. White enrollments were down by 2 percent from the fall of 2022. Black enrollments in graduate schools also increased, while White enrollments declined.

After a Sharp Drop During the Pandemic, Young Black Students Return to School

In 2020, 40.9 of non-Hispanic Black children ages 3 and 4 were enrolled in school compared to 61.7 percent in 2022. Non-Hispanic Black children ages 3 and 4 were more likely to be enrolled in school in 2022 than similarly aged children in any other major racial or ethnic group.

Black Enrollments in Graduate Education Show a Significant Decrease

Between Fall 2021 and Fall 2022, first-time graduate enrollment decreased by 7.8 percent among Black/African American students. Only 4.5 percent of U.S. citizens and permanent resident students enrolled for the first time in physical and earth sciences were Black. Blacks were 5.7 percent of first-time graduate students in engineering.

HBCUs Report Impressive Gains in Enrollments

With the recent Supreme Court decision banning race-sensitive admissions in higher education, it was expected that many Black students would turn their attention to historically Black colleges and universities. Indeed, some HBCUs have seen impressive growth.

University of South Carolina to Admit Top 10 Percent of Every High School Graduating...

All South Carolina students who are ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating class will be guaranteed admission to the University of South Carolina’s Columbia campus starting with the Fall 2024 application cycle. A similar plan was instituted in Texas in 1997 and had little impact on racial diversity.

No Progress in Black Students Admitted to the University of California System

System-wide, 4,855 Black students were admitted to at least one of the nine undergraduate campuses. This was the exact same number as a year ago. But overall, an additional 3,017 students were admitted compared to 2022. As a result, the Black percentage of all admitted students dropped from 6 percent to 5 percent.

A Snapshot of African American School Enrollment in the United States

African Americans made up a larger percentage of college and graduate students than was the case at all other lower grades of education. But from 2011 to 2021, the number of Black students enrolled in higher education dropped from 3,531.000 to 2,882,000.

The Small Racial Gap in College Aspirations

A new survey by YouthTruth looks at the college plans of the high school class of 2023. They found very little difference in the college aspirations of Black and White high school seniors. But aspirations and reality do not always meet. Also, the report found that In 2019, 79 percent of Black high school graduates said they wanted to go to college. This year, the figure has dropped to 74 percent.

How to Stem the Alarming Decline in Black Enrollments in Higher Education

A new report finds that over the last 20 years, the nation has lost 300,000 Black learners from the community college system, with participation rates among Black students lower today than they were 20 years ago. If we look at higher education as a whole, Black enrollments are down 600,000 students.

Record Number of Black Admits at the University of Southern California

The university reports that 13 percent of all students offered admission, identify as Black, a record for the university. In the fall of 2020, only 8.6 percent of the entering class was Black.

Highly Selective Colleges Become Even More Selective

In an era when college enrollments are generally down, a large number of selective educational institutions recorded a record number of applications, and therefore a record low admissions rate. But very few of them revealed data on the percentage of Blacks in their admitted classes.

Black In-State Applicants to the University of California System Are Down Slightly

Systemwide 132,226 students from California applied to at least one of the nine undergraduate campuses. Of these, 8,519 students were African Americans, making up 6 percent of all applicants. The total number of applicants to the university system was down slightly from a year ago. That year Blacks were 7 percent of all applicants.

Black First-Year Students at the Nation’s Leading Liberal Arts Colleges

For the first time in the 30-year history of the JBHE surveys, a college has enrolled a first-year class that is more than one-fifth Black. There are 96 Black students in this year's entering class at Amherst College. They make up 20.6 percent of the total.

Black Enrollments in Post-Pandemic Higher Education

In October 2021, there were 2,717.000 African Americans enrolled in higher education. They made up 15.7 percent of all enrollments in higher education. Black women made up 65 percent of all African American enrollments in higher education.

African Americans Are Making Progress in Medical School Enrollments

In 2022, there were 9,630 African Americans enrolled at U.S. medical schools. They made up 10 percent of total enrollments. In 2015, Blacks were 7.2 percent of total enrollments. Since 2015, the number of Blacks enrolled in U.S. medical schools is up by nearly 54 percent.

Black Enrollments in Higher Education Are Down But Not as Much as White Enrollments

A new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center finds that Black enrollments are down by 1.6 percent this fall compared to a year ago. White enrollments have dropped by 3.6 percent. Since 2020, Black enrollments have declined by 6.9 percent compared to 9.6 percent for Whites.

Test-Optional Policies Have Helped Boost Black Admission Rates at the University of California

This year, 4,855 Black students were admitted to one of the nine undergraduate campuses. This was 56.2 percent of all Black students who applied. For Whites, the admittance rate was similar at 56.8 percent. Two years ago, when standardized test scores were still required, Whites were accepted at a rate that was 11 percentage points higher than the rate for Blacks.

How the Pandemic Impacted Black Enrollments in California Community Colleges

A new study by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz which is a working paper of Stanford University's Institute for Economic Policy Research, finds that although all racial and ethnic groups experienced large decreases in enrollment during the pandemic, Black students experienced the largest effects.

Tracking the Gender Gap in Enrollments at HBCUs

For the fall of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic greatly impacted enrollments in higher education, women were 64.3 percent of all students at HBCUs, compared to 62.7 percent in 2019, before the pandemic took hold.

Oakton Community College in Illinois Establishes an Academy for Black Men

The Emory Williams Academy for Black Men is designed to support historically underserved and underrepresented students along their academic and career pathways, with a particular focus on Black male students.

The Devastating Effects of the Pandemic on Black Enrollments in Higher Education

This spring there were 4.2 percent more first-year students enrolled in American higher education than a year ago. But for Blacks, first-year enrollments are down 6 percent this spring compared to a year ago. This comes on top of a 13 percent decline from 2020 to 2021.

Some Top Colleges and Universities Divulge Data on Admission of Black Students

Highly selective educational institutions are increasingly unwilling to disclose data on the racial and ethnic makeup of the students they admit. Instead, they tout high numbers of students of color without giving a more detailed breakdown.

Black Applicants Increase at the Most Selective of University of California Campuses

At the flagship Berkeley campus, there are 4,647 applicants compared to 4,035 a year ago, an increase of more than 15 percent. This was the largest increase at any of the nine undergraduate campuses.

Racial Differences in School Enrollments and High School Graduation Rates

In October 2020, 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.

An Urgent Need to Focus on Retention Programs for African Americans in Higher Education

In 2020, there were 711,000 African American first-year students at undergraduate colleges and universities. That same year, there were only 220,000 Black students in their fourth year of undergraduate study.

The Pandemic Caused a Huge Drop in U.S. Students Studying Abroad in Africa

Of all U.S. students studying abroad in the 2019-20 academic year, 5,444 attended universities in sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan African nations sent seven times as many students to American universities as America sent to sub-Saharan African universities.

Students From Sub-Saharan African Nations at U.S. Colleges and Universities, 2020-21

The Institute for International Education reports that in the 2020-21 academic year, there were 39,061 students from sub-Saharan Africa enrolled at colleges and universities in the United States. This was down by 6.3 percent. But overall international student enrollment was down by 15 percent.

How Black Enrollments in Higher Education Have Been Impacted by the Global Pandemic

New research from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center finds that Black enrollments in higher education are down 5.1 percent from a year ago and by more than 11 percent over the past two years. The steepest declines are at the community college level.

Federal Judge Upholds Race-Sensitive Admissions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

In 2014, the group Students for Fair Admissions filed a lawsuit alleging that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill unfairly uses race to give significant preference to underrepresented minority applicants to the detriment of White and Asian-American applicants, while ignoring race-neutral alternatives for achieving a diverse student body.

A Snapshot of African American Enrollments in Graduate School After the Onset of the...

In the fall of 2020, 53,754 African Americans enrolled in graduate school for the first time. African Americans made up 12.3 percent of all first-time graduate enrollees from the United States in 2020. Of these, 69.4 percent were women.

A Snapshot of African American Enrollments in Private K-12 Schools in the United States

Of the more than 4.6 million students enrolled in private schools in the United States in 2019, 9.4 percent were Black or African American. Blacks made up a greater percentage of students in smaller private schools and in private schools in urban areas.

New Data Shows the Effect of the Pandemic of Black Enrollments in Higher Education

There were 2,331,529 Black or African American students enrolled in higher education last fall. In the fall of 2019, there were 2,474,200 Black students enrolled. Thus, Black enrollments were down nearly 6 percent. This is four times the drop for students as a whole. In 2010, more than 3 million Black students were enrolled in higher education.

Blacks More Likely to Take Advantage of Optional Test-Score Reporting During the Pandemic

Most colleges and universities were test-optional this past year due to the pandemic but some students still reported their scores. Only 31 percent of students from underrepresented minority groups reported test scores this past year, compared to 43 percent of all students who used the Common App.

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