The Solid Progress of African Americans in Graduate School Enrollments

A new report from the Council of Graduate Schools shows the tremendous progress blacks have made in graduate school enrollments. The most recent data for the fall of 2008 shows that there were 167,348 African Americans enrolled in all levels of graduate programs at U.S. colleges and universities. That year blacks made up 9.6 percent of all graduate school enrollments (including foreign students) and 13.4 percent of all U.S. citizens and permanent residents enrolled in U.S. graduate schools.

The average annual growth in African-American graduate school enrollments over the past decade has been 8.8 percent. The average total increase in graduate enrollments for white Americans has been 1.5 percent.

From 2007 to 2008, black graduate school enrollments increased by 7 percent, compared to an overall increase of 3 percent.

Copyright © 2009. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.