Black Enrollments at Penn State Are Increasing, But Gains Are Slow

In addition to the main campus near State College, there are 21 satellite campuses of Pennsylvania State University spread throughout the commonwealth. All told, these campuses enroll about 85,000 students. There are more than 4,500 black students enrolled at these campuses. They make up 5.4 percent of all enrollments systemwide.

The university reports that black enrollments systemwide have increased every year for the past 10 years. This year there are 442 more black students than there were in 2005.

At the flagship campus in University Park in the rural central part of the state, blacks make up 4 percent of the nearly 35,000 undergraduate students. The percentage of blacks on this main Penn State campus has inched up slowly in recent years.

It must be remembered that blacks are about 10 percent of the population in Pennsylvania. Therefore, the percentage of blacks on the main campus of Penn State is less than one half of what would exist if racial parity in enrollments were to prevail.