Black First-Year Enrollments Cut in Half at Auburn University

There are 225 black freshmen at Auburn University in Alabama this fall. This is down more than 50 percent from a year ago when there were 474 African-American freshmen. Blacks are 5.5 percent of the first-year class at Auburn, which is a state-operated university. Remember, that blacks are 29 percent of the Alabama population.

A major reason for the decline is a toughening of the admissions standards at Auburn. The average score of admitted students on the ACT college entrance examination rose from 24.8 to 25.9. The average black score on the ACT test is 16.9 on a scale of 1 to 36. There are not large numbers of black students in Alabama who score 26 or above on the ACT test.

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