The Huge African-American Gender Gap in Graduate Degree Programs

As reported in last week’s edition, new data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that in 2009, there were 342,400 African Americans enrolled in graduate programs in the United States.

But when broken down by gender, the enrollment statistics are shocking. There were 243,600 black women enrolled in graduate programs, compared to 90,500 black men. Thus, women accounted for a whopping 71.1 percent of all African-American graduate school enrollments.

For whites in 2009, women were 59.6 percent of total graduate school enrollments.

Ten years earlier in 2000, black women made up 67.5 percent of all African-American graduate enrollments. For whites the figures was 57.8 percent.