The Very Good News on Black Enrollments in Higher Education

According to the latest Department of Education statistics, there were 2,164,700 black students enrolled in higher education in 2004. This was up 5 percent from 2003. Since the year 2000 black enrollments in higher education are up a whopping 48 percent. Since 1990 black enrollments in all undergraduate and graduate programs have nearly doubled.

Here is another way to look at the tremendous progress blacks have made over the past 15 years. In 1990 black students accounted for 9 percent of all students enrolled in higher education. In 2004 blacks were fully 12.5 percent of all college and university students in the United States, a figure roughly equivalent to the black percentage of the U.S. population.

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