A Small Ray of Sunshine in the Midst of the Gloom of Black Enrollment Statistics at UCLA

Last spring the University of California at Los Angeles reported that only 95 black students had signified their intent to register this fall. In the fall of 2005, there were 125 black freshmen at UCLA.

The most up-to-date statistics show that there are 100 black first-year students at the University of California at Los Angeles, a slight improvement from the number expected to enroll but still down 20 percent from a year ago. Blacks make up only 2 percent of all first-year students at UCLA. The number of black freshman students on the UCLA campus has now reached the lowest level since the 1960s.

UCLA does report one encouraging statistic on black enrollments. The number of new black transfer students is up nearly 25 percent. This fall there are 162 black transfer students at UCLA, up from 130 in the fall of 2005. Thus, the number of new black students at UCLA is actually up slightly from a year ago.

Copyright © 2006. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.