A Surge in Bachelor’s Degree Awards to Blacks

According to the U.S. Department of Education, in the year 2004 blacks earned 131,241 four-year bachelor’s degrees from American colleges and universities. The number of blacks earning bachelor’s degrees was up nearly 6 percent from the previous year. In this year the number of African Americans earning bachelor’s degrees was the highest in this nation’s history and was more than double the number of bachelor’s degrees earned by blacks in 1990.

The large increase in bachelor’s degrees earned by blacks is encouraging, but it must always be remembered that only about two out of every five black students who enroll as freshmen in college go on to graduate within six years from the same institution they entered.

Blacks are now nearly 12 percent of total enrollments in higher education, but in the 2004 academic year they earned only 9.4 percent of all bachelor’s degrees awarded. Yet note that this figure too measures considerable progress. As recently as 1985 blacks earned only 5.9 percent of all bachelor’s degrees awarded in the United States.