Checking on the Progress of the Black Male Initiative at CUNY’s Medgar Evers College

Nationwide, black women are becoming an increasingly larger share of all African-American enrollments in higher education. But Medgar Evers College, the predominantly black campus of the City University of New York in Brooklyn, is seeking to reverse that trend. In 2001 Medgar Evers College established the Male Development and Empowerment Center in an effort to boost black male enrollments and graduation rates.

Since 2001 Medgar Evers reports that it is achieving success, albeit at a slow pace. In 2003 there were 1,044 black male students on campus. This year there are 1,371, an increase of more than 31 percent. In 2003 black males were 22.1 percent of the total enrollment. Today they are 24.7 percent of the student body.

The college reports that 139 black male students earned either a bachelor’s or two-year associate’s degree in the 2006-07 academic year. This was up 47.9 percent from the previous year.

Copyright © 2007. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.