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College Graduation Rates: Where Black Students Do the Best and Where They Fare Poorly Compared to Their White Peers --- Through the years, JBHE has closely examined black student graduation rates at our nation’s highest-ranked colleges and universities. We have also reported extensively on the racial gap in graduation rates at these institutions. Here we present data showing the largest and smallest racial gaps in graduation rates among thousands of less selective institutions.

Pell Grants: The Cornerstone of African-American Higher Education --- The federal Pell Grant program provides more than $4 billion to African-American college students each year. Without the Pell Grant program, hundreds of thousands of young blacks would not be able to afford college. While the Pell Grant program has been enormously successful in leveling the playing field in access to higher education, the number of Pell Grant recipients at the nation’s highest-ranked colleges and universities remains low. But the most recent data suggests that progress in increasing the number of low-income students on these campuses is beginning to take place.

Black Men May Have Begun to Close the Gender Gap in African-American Law School Enrollments --- Over the past quarter of a century, black women have been outperforming black men in almost every area of higher education. In law school education, a field that once was almost exclusively reserved for men, African-American women now make up more than 61 percent of all black enrollments at the nation’s highest-ranked law schools. The good news is that black men now may have begun to close the gap.

Ranking the Nation’s Leading Universities and Liberal Arts Colleges on Their Numbers of Black Faculty --- The number of black faculty at the nation’s 30 highest-ranked universities is often distorted by the fact that a large percentage of the faculties at these schools are medical school faculty members who make up a majority of the total count. Even so, only two of the highest-ranking universities have a percentage of black faculty that is higher than the national average for black faculty at all institutions. Although a great number of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges are located in rural areas of states in the Northeast or Midwest, many of these colleges have been successful in attracting significant numbers of black faculty.

Pepperdine University Stands Firm in Support of Race-Based Scholarships --- Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, has a conservative political reputation together with strong religious affiliations. So it comes as a surprise that Pepperdine, unlike many other private universities, has refused to knuckle under to right-wing litigating groups that have demanded that the university end its race-based scholarship program.