Nearly 2.7 Million African Americans Are Enrolled in Higher Education

New data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that despite the recent recession, college enrollments continue to climb. In the fall of 2009 there were nearly 21 million Americans who were enrolled in higher education. There were nearly 2.7 million African-American students enrolled in a degree-granting institution of higher learning in 2009. Thus, blacks made up 12.6 percent of all enrollments in higher education.

There were 1,271,636 blacks enrolled in four-year undergraduate programs in 2009. About 57 percent of these students were attending publicly operated colleges and universities.

The Education Department data shows that in 2009, 1,090,172 African Americans were enrolled in two-year community colleges. Nearly 90 percent of these students were attending public institutions.

In addition, there were 296,751 black students in graduate school. They made up 10.4 percent of all graduate school enrollments in 2009.

Copyright © 2011. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.