High-Ranking Institutions With Low Black Student Graduation Rates

Last week JBHE reported that Harvard University had the nation’s highest college graduation rate for black students. The college completion rate for blacks at Harvard is 96 percent.

Overall there are 10 high-ranking colleges and universities with a black student graduation rate of at least 90 percent.

Now we look at the high-ranking colleges and universities that have not been as successful in graduating black students. Among the nation’s colleges and universities that are commonly rated as selective, the lowest black student graduation rate occurs at the University of Michigan. Currently only 70 percent of the black freshmen who enroll at the University of Michigan go on to graduate. There are now nearly 334 black freshman students at the University of Michigan. If these black students graduate at the same rate as have their peers in the recent past, about 100 of them will fail to earn their bachelor’s degree.

Other high-ranking colleges and universities showing black student graduation rates below 75 percent are Middlebury College, Carleton College, Washington and Lee University, Bates College, UCLA, the University of California at Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.