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| Ranking America's Leading Universities on Their Success in Integrating African Americans JBHE has ranked America's leading universities according to their relative success in attracting, enrolling, and graduating African-American students as well as their progress in bringing black professors to their campuses. Universities are ranked according to a blending of 13 widely accepted quantitative measures of institutional racial integration. For the past 10 years The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education has been collecting standard racial data bearing on the relative success of the nation's leading universities in bringing black students and faculty to their campuses. The statistics we have obtained concentrate on the nation's most selective universities. These institutions tend to be role models for the nation's 3,000 four-year colleges and universities. Racial policies of these top-tier universities are likely to shape the policies of other institutions of higher education. Over the years JBHE has published regular comparisons of results at the individual universities we have followed. We have done this with the explicit purpose of encouraging competition among the universities to bring greater numbers of blacks to their professorial ranks as well as to their student bodies. In some instances, we have found that universities showing substandard or poor performance tend to produce improved results when their racial statistics are made known to the public. There is always serious backlash when racial integration is forced on a university as a result of government compulsion. But we enthusiastically support the greater presence of black faculty and students in institutions of higher education when that comes about as a result of institutional perceptions of competitive advantage. In fact, publishing racial statistics and other information that encourage this competitive process in higher education has always been the central mission of this journal. We now have in hand a very large and complete database on institutional performance. This puts us in a position to blend our statistics and provide an overall ranking of the nation's leading universities on their comparative success in bringing African Americans into the ranks of higher education. We wish to emphasize that our rankings relate only to the institutional integration of African Americans. Our agenda does not include Hispanics, Asians, or other people of color. Unlike other ranking efforts in the field of higher education, our statistics, without exception, are highly quantitative. This is in sharp contrast to highly impressionistic institutional rankings such as those compiled by U.S. News & World Report in which 25 percent or more of the total ranking score is derived from subjective surveys of university reputations as determined by presidents, provosts, and deans of admissions at other institutions. All JBHE data is obtained from our own in-house surveys of the colleges and universities as well as from government sources. Each year JBHE surveys university and college admissions offices to obtain data on applicants, acceptances, first-year enrollments, and black student yield. On a regular basis we also survey deans of faculty at these universities for statistical information on their numbers and percentages of black faculty and black tenured faculty. While one may disagree over what measuring factors are most important, the data we collect is broad-based, solid, quantifiable, and not subject to dispute. In making college decisions, young African Americans face a uniquely complicated and stressful decision. The racial climate at the schools they are considering is a matter of prime concern. We intend to give our institutional rankings wide publicity with the hope that our information will help college-bound African Americans identify universities that suit their goals and expectations. How the Rankings Were Constructed Our evaluation system rates the nation's 26 highest academically ranked universities in 13 categories or factors of racial diversity. The 13 categories are: •Total black student enrollments (graduate and undergraduate).
Each university was given a score in each of the 13 categories of measured integration of African Americans according to where the university ranked compared to its peers. In each of the 13 categories the top performer among the 26 highest-ranked universities received a score of 100. The university that ranked second in each category was given a score of 98. The university with the third best performance in each category was awarded a score of 96, and so on down the line. The university that scored the lowest in each category received a score of 50 points. We have assigned a base minimal score of 50 to all universities. Therefore, success is ranked on a scale of 50 to 100. It will be asked why we have established a minimum score of 50. The reason is found in the impressive long-term progress in racial integration that almost all universities have achieved. Until the midpoint of the twentieth century, institutions of higher education in the United States had adopted an almost universal rule of racial exclusion. American universities celebrated scholarly ability and they cherished intelligence and learning in student applicants — but not in black people. Some of the universities in our study such as Rice, Chapel Hill, Duke, and Emory were lily-white until the mid-1960s. Even Harvard University, which in recent years has been a leader in racial diversification efforts, had only nine blacks in its first-year class in 1962. But nine years later, there were 128 black freshmen at Harvard. Nationwide, the progress over the past 40 years has been huge. According to our count, the 26 universities in our study are currently providing undergraduate and graduate higher education to more than 24,300 black students. Forty years ago, the total was probably less than one hundredth of this amount. Similarly, in 1945 no black scholar held a tenured post at any major predominantly white university. As Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois wrote early in the twentieth century, it was most impertinent to even raise the question. Then, in 1947, the University of Chicago made history by hiring Professor Allison Davis, a graduate of Williams College who held a master's from Harvard and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, to a tenured post in the department of anthropology. Davis taught at the University of Chicago for more than 40 years. But it would be two decades before Harvard University would hire a black scholar to a tenured position to its arts and sciences faculty. Today, all of our major universities have tenured black professors on their faculties. All told, the 26 universities in our study now have 503 black tenured faculty. Compared to the racial policies of many other institutions in our society such as network television, insurance, and commercial banking, America's universities, almost without exception, have now turned in a history of strong performance. Thus, our assigned minimal score of 50 is intended to provide for the huge progress the universities in our study have made over the years since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. To arrive at an institution's overall score, the university's scores in each of the 13 categories were added together. The total score was then divided by the number of categories for which we had data for that particular school. This calculation produced an average African-American diversity ranking for each university. A school with an overall diversity rating of 100 would have finished first in all of the 13 categories. A university that finished last in all of the 13 categories would have an overall diversity rating of 50. Of course, none of the 26 universities in our survey comes close to either of these two extremes. The university with the highest overall score was rated first. The university with the lowest overall score was rated twenty-sixth. Additional information on the methodology used and the limitations of this data may be found at the end of this article. The Rankings Duke University had the highest average diversity rating of the nation's most selective and academically prestigious universities. Also ranking among the top five in racial diversity are Emory University, Princeton University, Washington University, and Vanderbilt University. It is of interest to note that three of the top five universities in our ratings are in southern states. Forty years ago, these institutions were lily-white. The progress they have made has been impressive. The University of Chicago was the lowest-ranked university in our survey followed by CalTech and Johns Hopkins. Here is a brief rundown of the results and commentary on the performance for each of the 26 universities: 1. Duke University (Average Score: 90.36): Duke finished at the top of our survey for the simple reason that it consistently ranked near the top for each category and did not rank anywhere near the bottom in any category. Duke finished no worse than ninth in any one of the 11 categories for which data was available. Duke also had the best performance among the top-ranked universities in its five-year gain in the percentage of blacks in its freshman class. For the 2001-02 academic year, blacks made up a striking 11.2 percent of the first-year class at Duke. This was up from 7.8 percent five years ago. Duke's worst performing category was in the percentage of tenured faculty who are black. However, with a tenured faculty that is 2.7 percent black, Duke still was rated higher in this category than 17 of the other 26 high-prestige universities. Clearly one explanation for the strong performance of Duke in so many categories is the sincere commitment of President Nan Keohane to racial diversity. Duke's strong improvement in black faculty levels may be attributed to an incentive plan which makes it highly advantageous for academic departments to engage black faculty. This high ranking does not mean that Duke University is a Shangri-la for black students. Serious racial issues remain on the Duke campus. Residential segregation has been a problem in recent years. Some observers have noted that there is little overall interaction between many black and white students on the Duke campus. Also, there has been a high rate of faculty turnover among blacks. A decade ago, Harvard's Henry Louis Gates Jr. called his one year experience at Duke the most racist experience of his academic life. But clearly the climate at Duke for both black students and black faculty has improved immeasurably since that time. 2. Emory University (Average Score: 86.62): Emory finished first in total black enrollments and second in three other categories: black faculty, gain in black faculty, and gain in tenured black faculty. Emory's enrollment and faculty numbers alone would have placed the university ahead of Duke in our rankings. But the university's comparatively low black student graduation rate, the decline in that rate over the past several years, and the university's very low black student yield brought down its overall average. Emory has more very high scores in more categories than Duke but is not as consistent across the board. Emory's location in the city of Atlanta is obviously a major draw for both black students and black faculty. The city, which has been under black political control for more than a generation, has a wealth of black-oriented cultural and social events that would appeal to prospective black students and faculty members considering offers of employment. 3. Princeton University (Average Score: 82.36): Princeton University overcomes poor ratings on black faculty to finish third in our rankings. Princeton's striking improvement in attracting black freshmen in recent years had a major positive impact on its ranking. The school's very high black student graduation rate also helped Princeton move up in the rankings. So far, Princeton has not publicly posted overall black student yield figures. But figures released by Princeton to JBHE on black student yield for low-income students would, if applied to black students as a whole, place the university among the top three of the 26 highest-ranking universities in the black student yield rankings. The university's black student yield undoubtedly has increased dramatically over the past five years due to Princeton's new financial aid policies providing unprecedented benefits to low-income students of all races. These policies eliminate all student loans and replace them with outright grants. In addition, students from families with incomes of less than $46,500 a year receive full tuition grants. Princeton's improving student yield figures, if reported, would undoubtedly improve its overall diversity score. But even if Princeton were to rank first in both student yield categories in our index, its low percentage of black faculty would not enable the university to overtake Duke for first place in the overall diversity rankings. Princeton was the last university in the Ivy League to admit black students. Now, despite an archaic undergraduate club system that is said to discourage the applications of many blacks, Princeton today stands first in our rankings of the Ivy League institutions. 4. Washington University (Average Score: 82.00): The high ranking of Washington University in St. Louis in our calculations may come as a surprise to many readers of this journal. Away from the media centers on both coasts, Washington University never wins much national attention. But the university is a consistent performer across the board on most of our standard measures of African-American diversity. The university posted no figures near the bottom of the pack in any category. Washington University was rated the best in two of the 13 categories in our survey. Some 84 percent of all entering black students at Washington University go on to graduate. This is a high graduation rate and only two percentage points below the rate for entering white students. The racial graduation gap was smaller at Washington University than at any other high-ranking university. In addition, blacks make up a very high 3.1 percent of the tenured faculty at the university. This is up from 1.2 percent only five years ago. This progress was unmatched by any other university in our survey. 5. Vanderbilt University (Average Score 81.85): Vanderbilt, in common with Emory University, ranked at the extreme in many of our categories. In measures of improvement in the percentage of black freshmen, progress in tenured black faculty, and the difference in graduation rates between white and black students, Vanderbilt was ranked second among all the top-ranked universities. But an overall reduction in percentage of total black faculty over the past five years placed the university at the bottom of our rankings in that category. Clearly Vanderbilt has made huge progress since 1960 when it expelled one of its few black students for trying to organize a lunch counter sit-in at a Nashville department store. But much still remains to be accomplished. Its black enrollment numbers have been improving which helps the university in our ratings, but overall black enrollments of 5.3 percent are still very low for a university located in the South. Also, Vanderbilt has a low level of black tenured faculty. Three years ago Michael Eric Dyson, a controversial but widely admired black scholar now at the University of Pennsylvania, was recommended unanimously by a Vanderbilt faculty search committee to head up the university's black studies program. The Vanderbilt dean refused to make the appointment. Some faculty charged that the Vanderbilt administration was looking for a "system Negro," one who they could control and one who would not be politically active on campus. At the time Professor Dyson remarked to The Tennessean: "I'm sure that philosophically and theoretically Vanderbilt is quite riveted to increasing and expanding the number of minority faculty, but philosophy and practice are two different things." 6. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Average Score: 81.69): In recent years the administration of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has made a concerted effort to increase the level of black students and black faculty on campus. The university is particularly strong in the categories dealing with student diversity. The university is ranked second in the percentage of total black enrollments and first in the percentage of black freshmen. Chapel Hill also fares well in most measures of black faculty. The university has nine African-American faculty members who hold endowed chairs. This is the highest number in the United States. The university would have ranked higher in our tables except for the fact that compared to many of its peers the University of North Carolina has a very low black student graduation rate of 66 percent and a large racial gap in graduation rates between whites and blacks. 7. Georgetown University (Average Score: 80.77): Georgetown University has increased overall black enrollments to 9.2 percent from 6.8 percent five years ago. This 2.4 percentage point rise is the largest of any university in our survey. But these numbers may decline in future years because blacks made up only 7 percent of the freshman class in the 2001-02 academic year. Georgetown's level of black enrollments must also be viewed in light of the fact that it is located in Washington, D.C., a city that has a black population of more than 60 percent. Georgetown's relatively low black student yield also had a negative impact on its overall ranking. Black student yield may also be harmed by the fact that Georgetown has been very slow to institute a black studies program on campus. While only a tiny percentage of African-American college students major in black studies, a very large majority want to take at least one course in the field. Georgetown has also been plagued by a series of racial incidents on campus in recent years. The attendant publicity may have caused Georgetown to lose some highly qualified black students. 8. Harvard University (Average Score: 80.46): Harvard is the highest-rated university in the important category of black student yield. Nearly two thirds of all black students who are accepted for admission at Harvard decide to enroll. This statistic in itself demonstrates that college-bound black students have the highest regard for the university. Also, the university's black student graduation rate remains the best in the nation. But Harvard's black student yield has been dipping in recent years and so has the black percentage of its freshman classes. In the past five years, black student yield has dropped from 76.1 percent to 63.6 percent. In the same period, the percentage of blacks in the first-year class dropped from 8.5 percent in 1997 to 7.1 percent in 2001. The recent controversy involving Harvard president Lawrence Summers and the faculty of Harvard's Afro-American studies department may put further pressures on Harvard's ability to maintain its high black student yield. Preliminary enrollment data suggests that this year's freshman class will have fewer black students than the class that enrolled in the fall of 2001. Also, Harvard is ranked very low in terms of the percentage of blacks on its faculty. Harvard is known for offering the most prestigious black studies department in the world. This department has consistently attracted a large group of leading black professors. But black professors are almost totally absent from a large majority of the university's mainstream academic departments. As a result, Harvard's overall faculty numbers are far below those of many of its peer institutions. 9. University of Virginia (Average Score: 80.31): For five years in a row, the University of Virginia has enrolled the highest percentage of incoming black freshmen of any of the nation's highest-ranked universities. But in recent years black freshman students and overall black enrollments have dropped significantly. As a state-chartered university, Virginia, in common with the University of Michigan and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is particularly vulnerable to legal challenges of its affirmative action policies. For this reason the university may have backed off from the aggressive race-sensitive admissions policies it once pursued. While the university maintains a high rate of black student enrollments, it was rated near the bottom in two categories: five-year progress in increasing overall black enrollments and five-year progress in black freshman enrollments. The overall percentage of black faculty at UVA also dropped over the past five years. Virginia was boosted in the ratings by its very high black student graduation rate, the great improvement in that rate in recent years, as well as by the small difference between its black graduation rate and its white graduation rate. 10. Brown University (Average Score: 80.00): More than 4 percent of the tenured faculty at Brown University are black. This is the second-highest percentage among the academically top rated universities. Brown's black student graduation rate is also among the best in the nation. But on other measures in our ratings, Brown is no better than middle of the road. Brown has made little progress in recent years in increasing the percentage of black students on its campus. However, as a result of the appointment in 2001 of Ruth J. Simmons, a distinguished scholar and administrator who is black, as president of Brown, it is possible that her presence will cause black enrollments and black faculty numbers at Brown to increase in future years. 11. Columbia University (Average Score: 79.67): Columbia is rated first in three of our 13 categories all dealing with black faculty. More than 7 percent of Columbia's total faculty and 4.3 percent of its tenured faculty are black. It should be noted that many of these black faculty are members of the faculty of Columbia's professional schools and do not teach at the undergraduate level. As JBHE has reported in the past, there are very few black scholars teaching in the core undergraduate arts and sciences curriculum at the university. However, as is the case for other universities, we note that nonmedical professional school faculty are also included in the totals. Columbia's record on black student enrollments is not impressive. In fact, Columbia ranks near the bottom in its progress in enrolling black freshmen. This drop in enrollment has occurred despite the fact that the university is located adjacent to a predominantly black section of New York City. Columbia also has a low black student graduation rate and that rate has been falling in recent years. This past July, Dr. Lee Bollinger, former president of the University of Michigan, assumed the presidency of Columbia. He is one of the nation's foremost advocates of affirmative action in higher education. Thus, we may expect that in the years to come Columbia will increase its efforts to enroll black students and to continue its already strong performance in hiring black faculty. 12. Stanford University (Average Score: 78.31): Stanford is coming on strong in black student enrollments in its undergraduate program. Its freshman class in the 2001-02 academic year was a very high 10.3 percent black, up from 8 percent five years earlier. Preliminary figures for this coming academic year show that blacks will be a very large 12 percent of the first-year class. Stanford's black student yield of 59 percent is approaching the yield at Harvard and has improved by nearly 11 percentage points over the past five years. It is likely that Stanford's success in enrolling black students is explained in part by the fact that the University of California at Berkeley, the most rigorous and respected unit of the University of California system, is no longer able to practice affirmative action in student admissions. But Stanford's numbers on black faculty are disappointing. There has been no progress in increasing black faculty levels over the past five years. Dr. Condoleezza Rice, an educational conservative who served as Stanford's provost in recent years, stated a commitment to affirmative action in student admissions. But she drew the line on faculty appointments. Also a drag on the overall performance of Stanford in our evaluation is the university's black student graduation rate of 84 percent. This is considerably lower than the rate for its peer universities in the upper echelon of academic rankings. 13. Yale University (Average Score: 76.18): Yale University has a disappointing record in its appointment of black faculty. For example, in 2001, not one of the 57 faculty members at the Yale School of Management was black. Only one other of the nation's 25 highest-ranked business schools in the United States had no black faculty members. And over the past 30 years there has been almost no improvement in overall black faculty levels at Yale. For the past five years, the percentage of tenured faculty at Yale who are black has been stuck at 2.6 percent. This doesn't appear to be a matter of great concern to the Yale administration. Yale's provost Alison Richard has stated that the university will not enter any bidding war for black academic celebrities. She has also stated her belief that the pool of available black faculty who are qualified to teach at Yale is very small. But there are signs that progress is at hand. Yale has now conferred departmental status to its black studies program. This permits the department to hire its own faculty. In addition, a group of new black professors has joined the Yale faculty in various other academic departments in the past year. But despite positive news on the faculty front, Yale has shown little progress in increasing black student enrollments on campus. Over the past five years, the black percentage of the Yale freshman class has declined from 8.5 percent to 7.9 percent. 14. Rice University (Average Score: 75.23): For a university whose charter once specifically prohibited the admission of black students, Rice has made important progress in recent years. Now the university is hampered in its diversification efforts by its interpretation of the Hopwood court of appeals ruling to the effect that, although Rice is a private university, it is compelled to end its affirmative action admissions program. Yet, despite this fact, Rice was able to enroll a freshman class that was 7.4 percent black this past fall. Rice has also made some good progress in recent years in increasing its percentage of faculty and faculty with tenure, although these levels are still far below those of most of its peer institutions. 15. Cornell University (Average Score: 75.00): One of the essentially rural campuses among the top-rated universities, Cornell has always struggled to achieve a large number of black enrollments. As a result, it ranks near the bottom in most categories in our index dealing with black student enrollments. Cornell does much better in the percentage of black faculty, ranking high in both overall faculty and tenured faculty. 16. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Average Score: 74.77): MIT struggles hard to achieve racial diversity and it has met with strong success especially when compared to other peer institutions that specialize in the sciences and engineering. These heavily science oriented schools are hampered in their diversity efforts by the fact that black college students are less likely to pursue studies in these fields than are white students. In addition, science-oriented colleges and universities have a more difficult time bringing blacks into their faculties because there is a small pool of black scholars who have achieved Ph.D.s in the sciences. Nevertheless, MIT has improved its level of overall black faculty from 1.9 percent five years ago to 3 percent today. The percentage of blacks among its tenured faculty has improved from 1.1 percent to 1.7 percent. MIT also possesses a very high black student yield of 51.3 percent. MIT's performance in enrolling and graduating black students as well as in hiring black faculty members is far superior to its West Coast counterpart CalTech and the other science-oriented universities in our survey. 17. University of Pennsylvania (Average Score: 73.64): The University of Pennsylvania did not score in the top six in any of the 13 categories in our survey. Nor did it finish in the bottom six in any category. The university's very low black student graduation rate of 77 percent and its wide gap in graduation rates between whites and blacks have a significant negative impact on the university's overall diversity ranking. In contrast to Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania is located in a major urban area with a large black population, but its black enrollment figures are little better than its rural Ivy League counterpart. In recent years, the university's commitment to black studies has been drawn into question and this may have hurt the university's efforts to recruit both black students and black faculty. In percentage terms, Penn has lost both black faculty and tenured black faculty over the past five years. But the Penn black studies effort is undergoing a renewal highlighted by the arrival of the African-American scholar Michael Eric Dyson. 18. Dartmouth College (Average Score: 73.23): Here is another Ivy League school in a rural location which has had a reputation of being unfriendly to blacks. Several years ago a fraternity at Dartmouth held a widely publicized "ghetto party" where all guests were invited to dress as if they lived in the ghetto. The incident caused a drop-off in black applicants to Dartmouth. However, in recent years Dartmouth has made a strong effort to attract black students. This past academic year 6.6 percent of its freshman class was black, up from 5.2 percent five years ago. Its black student yield has increased by more than 11 percent during the period, the second-highest increase in our survey. But Dartmouth has had less success in retaining black faculty. While its black faculty levels remain higher than its Ivy League peers Harvard and Yale, Dartmouth has seen a reduction over the past five years in its overall black faculty as well as in its tenured black faculty. 19. University of Michigan (Average Score: 71.85): Despite litigation challenging its affirmative action admissions programs, the University of Michigan has been able to achieve and maintain a high level of black enrollments. It also ranks third among the highest-rated universities in terms of its percentage of overall black faculty. However, the university has a poor record in promoting its black faculty to tenured positions. Only 1.6 percent of the tenured faculty at the university are black and this level has dropped substantially over the past five years. But the main factor lowering the university's overall ranking is its extremely poor record in graduating black students. The black graduation rate at the University of Michigan is only 60 percent. This is 27 percentage points lower than the rate for white students. In addition, the black graduation rate has dropped five percentage points over the past seven years. 20. University of California at Berkeley (Average Score: 71.85): The University of California received exactly the same score as the University of Michigan and therefore ties for nineteenth place in our rankings. Since 1997, the university has been required by law to operate without benefit of an affirmative action admissions plan. As a result, the university's black freshman enrollments have plummeted to 3.9 percent from 6.5 percent five years ago. Obviously, one may not fault the university for this development. The climate of race relations has been damaged by the enactment of Proposition 209. Whether it be by university inaction or state mandate, the fact that black students have a much lower presence on the Berkeley campus than in the past remains relevant. Also, black faculty levels at Berkeley are not high. In fact, the black percentage of the total faculty at Berkeley has actually declined over the past five years. Berkeley also has a very low black student graduation rate of 63 percent and a huge gap in the graduation rate between black and white students. But the university's black student graduation rate has improved by 12 percentage points over the past seven years, the largest increase among the high-ranking universities. 21. Northwestern University (Average Score: 70.91): Northwestern University has a disappointing record on racial diversity. Only its high black student graduation figures save Northwestern from falling even further in the rankings. Less than 6 percent of the student body is black and about 10 percent of its black students are football players. It is in the category of black faculty that Northwestern's numbers are most disappointing. In our survey of black faculty conducted earlier this year, we found that only 2 percent of the Northwestern faculty were black. Only two schools among the top-ranked universities had a lower percentage. Over the past five years the percentage of black faculty and tenured black faculty at Northwestern has declined. There is, however, some encouraging news on this front. Northwestern has made a major commitment to engage additional black faculty. Already, these efforts have paid off handsomely with the addition of 10 new black faculty members for the coming academic year. For Northwestern, this commitment to adding black faculty members should produce an improvement in our rankings. 22. University of Notre Dame (Average Score: 70.77): Notre Dame ranks near the bottom in almost all categories bearing on black student enrollments. Only 3.2 percent of its total enrollments and 3 percent of its latest freshman class have been black. The fact that Notre Dame has a religious affiliation with the Catholic Church is not a valid explanation for this low performance. Georgetown University, a Jesuit university, has a black enrollment percentage that is three times that of Notre Dame. Notre Dame does have a high black student yield of 52 percent. But this figure is not as commanding as it would be at a university without football scholarships. A whopping 26 percent of the black students at Notre Dame are on athletic scholarship and, because of Notre Dame's reputation as a football powerhouse, the yield among this group is probably close to 100 percent. 23. Carnegie Mellon University (Average Score: 68.92): Hampered by its concentration on the hard sciences and engineering, Carnegie Mellon University finishes near the bottom in many categories in our survey and dead last with a black student graduation rate of 56 percent. Its percentage of blacks in the student body is low. Blacks make up only 1.6 percent of the faculty and 0.8 percent of the tenured faculty. The university is saved from an even lower ranking by the fact that it has shown improvement in recent years in percentage of black faculty and student enrollments. On almost all measures of student and faculty diversity, Carnegie Mellon trails MIT, a university with a similar concentration in science. 24. Johns Hopkins University (Average Score: 68.67): Black enrollments at the professional schools at Johns Hopkins University tend to be very high. Thus, overall black enrollments at the university remain at good levels. But black enrollments in the undergraduate programs at Johns Hopkins are extremely low and they have declined in recent years. The university has a very poor black student yield. A respectable 3.5 percent of the faculty at Johns Hopkins are black. But only 0.5 percent of the tenured faculty are black, the lowest level among the nation's 26 highest academically ranked universities. Johns Hopkins also scores low in graduating black students. Its black student graduation rate has declined by two percentage points over the past several years. 25. California Institute of Technology (Average Score: 67.54): CalTech is rated last among the highest-ranked universities in four of our 13 categories. In 2001, 2.3 percent of its freshman class was black, the lowest in our survey. But even this figure is an improvement over the university's performance in recent years. Twice within the past six years there have been no black freshmen at CalTech. CalTech does no better with black faculty. Only two of its 309 faculty members are black. Both black faculty members hold tenure. Five years ago, there were no black tenured faculty at CalTech. CalTech would have finished last in our rankings except for one factor. It has improved its black student graduation rate from 50 percent to 62 percent in recent years. This is the best improvement among the academically highest rated universities. 26. University of Chicago (Average Score: 67.27): Despite the fact that its faculty is considered among the most conservative in the nation, the University of Chicago has shown good progress in increasing its percentage of black faculty from 1.9 percent in 1997 to 2.7 percent today. But in every other category in our survey, the university is among the worst performers. The university has never been an enthusiastic supporter of affirmative action in student admissions. Only 4 percent of total enrollments at the university are black. Poor results are present despite the fact that the university is located in a city in which the population is about one half black. Harming the racial integration rankings of this academically powerful university is the fact that the University of Chicago's black student graduation rate is a dismal 67 percent. Explanation of Methodology and
It is clear that in evaluating the progress of an institution in bringing African Americans to its campus there are success or failure factors that are beyond the control of a particular university. For example, it is generally believed that universities located in rural areas are at a disadvantage in attracting black students and black faculty and therefore will necessarily have a more difficult time achieving a high score in those categories dealing with enrollment and faculty hirings. We agree that this is the case. Readers should consider this fact when drawing conclusions from our data. We note, however, that some universities located in rural or suburban areas such as Dartmouth and Cornell have relatively strong records in either enrolling black students or engaging black faculty. Similarly, universities located in the South such as Duke and Emory, which finished first and second in our rankings, are located in a part of the country where there are large numbers of blacks. Therefore, they may have some advantage in attracting black students. Yet the University of Chicago, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, Penn, and even CalTech are all located in or near cities with large black populations but none of these schools has been successful in attracting black students in percentages as high as either Duke or Emory. An important consideration is the fact that individual universities send students down widely different roads of academic study. This is critical in considering the rankings of universities with a high concentration of students in the sciences and engineering. Among the 26 highest-ranked universities, those with a strong focus on the sciences and engineering include MIT, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, and CalTech. Readers should be cautioned that ratings of these universities may be unfairly blemished by the fact that black students are less likely to pursue majors in fields in which these universities specialize. In addition, these universities are severely handicapped in attracting black faculty for the simple reason that there is a very small pool of available black academics who are prepared in the science fields in which these universities concentrate. Given these limitations, we note that MIT, a university with possibly the strongest science program in the nation, is rated higher in our rankings than institutions such as Penn, Dartmouth, Michigan, Berkeley, and Notre Dame. This demonstrates that MIT, despite its heavy emphasis on science, has achieved impressive success in establishing a relatively high percentage of blacks in both student and faculty ranks. The Question of Weighting After careful consideration, we decided to rate each category equally in our rankings. Rather than assign an arbitrary weighting to any given category, we believed the best course was to treat all of these important indicators equally. We note that if we were to double the weighting of categories, such as overall black enrollment or overall black faculty, there would be little change in our rankings. The top and bottom places would remain the same, with some minor shuffling of universities in the middle of the pack. Readers who believe any particular category should be weighted differently or who conclude that some categories should be eliminated should contact JBHE and make their case. The data is presented in such a way that new calculations can be made using any weighting desired. The Inclusion of Graduation Rate Data Some readers may ask about the role of black student graduation rates in our calculations. We feel that graduation rate data is an important indicator of a university's commitment to the successful education of black students. A high college graduation rate tends to indicate a strong faculty and administrative commitment to black students. Also, a positive graduation rate is an indicator that black students are happy and are showing good academic performance at a given university. Some contend that a high black graduation rate tends to show an absence of academic rigor. But there is little evidence that this is the case. All of the universities in our rankings are academically rigorous. Race may be taken into account in admissions to these universities, but it is not a significant factor in grading. We do note one weakness in the use of the graduation rate statistics. All government studies show that the most important factor causing high black student dropout rates in college is family economic pressures. Therefore, a university with a strong commitment to the laudatory goal of admitting large numbers of low-income blacks may have its graduation rate damaged by its admissions outreach policy. How Missing Data Affects the Calculations Readers will ask about the implications of missing statistics. At the present time six of the 26 universities do not report black student yield figures. Two other schools have reported yield figures recently but did not do so in the past. The omission of this data does have a small impact on the overall rankings. But because we take the total score for each school in all categories and divide the score by the number of categories we have data for that particular school, we arrive at an average ranking. This tends to neutralize the impact of missing data. Obviously, we would have preferred to have complete data on black student yield for all 26 schools, but the missing data is not significant in the overall picture. One final comment: Clearly there are other factors that go into the overall racial climate at a given university which cannot be measured by the standard indices of institutional racial integration. These include attitudes of faculty toward black students, patterns of residential segregation on campus, attitudes of white students toward racial minorities, and, particularly, the seriousness and frequency of campus incidents of racial animosity or violence. For nearly 10 years, JBHE has collected and published incidents of campus racial hate occurring in a wide variety of institutional settings. But we have no reliable information on the frequency of incidents of racial hate on the campuses we cover. All the reports are necessarily anecdotal. Moreover, there are no consistent figures on the racial makeup of a school's administration, support staff, police force, or service staff. Nine years ago, JBHE employed the Freedom of Information Act to obtain information on the racial makeup of administrative, faculty, clerical, construction trade, and service staff positions at major universities. After several years of legal efforts, we obtained figures from the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs of the U.S. Department of Labor, but the statistics provided were hopelessly out of date. Also, we have no information on the extent of cultural activities geared toward black students at particular campuses. Finally, we have no measurable information of the strength of the black student organizations on campus. Despite these missing elements that might have entered our ratings report, we believe that our broad assortment of highly quantitative data measuring the state of racial integration provides an excellent guide to whether a given university is committed to the education of African Americans and is providing a happy place for them to be. 
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