Tracking the 10-Year Change in Black Student First-Year Enrollments at the Nation’s Highest-Ranked Universities and Liberal Arts Colleges

Of the nation’s leading universities, Vanderbilt University has shown the most impressive progress over the past decade in increasing black freshman enrollments. Large increases have also occurred at Johns Hopkins, Columbia, UCLA, Tufts, and MIT.

The largest decline in black first-year enrollments has been at the University of Michigan.

Among the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges, almost all showed significant gains over the past decade. Bowdoin College in Maine saw the largest increase. At Middlebury, Smith, Pomona, and Grinnell colleges, first-year enrollments of black students doubled or more.

Readers of our journal often write that they find our statistics depressing because the figures so often show disappointing progress for African Americans in higher education. We concede that often this is true. But here we present some very good news.

Over the past decade college enrollments for blacks are up, and in many cases are significantly higher. This is true at almost all of the nation’s leading universities and liberal arts colleges.

Each autumn JBHE surveys the admissions offices of the nation’s high-ranking universities and liberal arts colleges to determine the number of black applicants, accepted black students, and the number of black first-year students who actually enroll at these institutions. Our database permits us to examine the enrollment trends to determine which high-ranking universities and colleges are making the most progress in increasing the number of black students on campus.

The accompanying table shows the number of black freshmen admitted to the nation’s 26 highest-ranking universities in both 1998 and 2007.* Of these 26 universities, 22 showed an increase in black first-year enrollments over the past decade.

The largest increase in both actual numbers and in percentage terms occurred at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Black first-year enrollments at Vanderbilt have increased more than 160 percent  during the period. We must note that Vanderbilt University declined to participate in JBHE’s annual surveys in the 1996 to 1998 period. However, Vanderbilt did supply data in 1995, and that number is reflected in our table. We assume that the university may not have had good news to report in the 1996 to 1998 period and thus chose not to comply with our survey. Therefore, the gains from 1998 to 2007 may be even greater than reported here.

Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, Tufts University, and the University of California at Los Angeles all showed gains in black first-year enrollments of more than 60 percent over the 1998 to 2007 period. The year 1998 was the first in which consideration of race was not permitted at state-operated universities in California. So at UCLA and Berkeley, 1998 was a low point in black enrollments. We note here that even with the 17.7 percent improvement in black enrollments at Berkeley and the 62.6 percent increase at UCLA, the level of enrollments does not come close to the level that existed prior to the ban on affirmative action admissions.

Particularly encouraging are the major increases in black enrollments at MIT and Carnegie Mellon, two universities where many students concentrate in science and engineering.

Universities Showing a Decline in Black Enrollments

In the 1998 to 2007 period only four of the nation’s 26 highest-ranked universities showed a decrease in black first-year enrollments. Harvard University was the only Ivy League college to show a decline in black first-year enrollments. Duke University also showed a slight decline. These small decreases are not a major concern considering the fact that both universities were near the top in black first-year enrollments in both 1998 and 2007.

At the University of Michigan, the undergraduate admissions plan, which assigned positive points to black applicants, was declared unconstitutional in the June 2003 Gratz ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. But the decline in black enrollments had begun even before the Supreme Court’s decision. In 2001 blacks were 9 percent of all incoming freshmen. In 2004 blacks were only 5.8 percent of the first-year class. In 2006 voters in Michigan passed a public referendum that banned all considerations of race in admissions decisions at state universities. In the fall of 2007, 5.6 percent of the incoming class at the University of Michigan was black. But many of these students were admitted before the ban on affirmative action became law. Therefore, black enrollments may decline even further in the years ahead.

Of course, enrolling large numbers of black students does not mean much unless these students go on to graduate from these high-ranking institutions. But all of these prestigious universities have high black student graduation rates, many over 85 percent. And JBHE data shows that at almost all of these universities the black student graduation rate has improved over the past decade.**

Black Enrollment Trends at High-Ranking Liberal Arts Colleges

Black progress has been equally impressive at the nation’s highest-ranked liberal arts institutions. Of these 23 liberal arts colleges for which we have data from both 1998 and 2007, 18 showed increases in black freshman enrollments over the past decade. At five of the highly selective colleges, black enrollments at least doubled in the 1998 to 2007 period.

Bowdoin College in Maine led the way. In 1998 there were only 12 black freshmen at Bowdoin College. This past academic year there were 42 black first-year students. Admissions officials at Bowdoin told JBHE that current black students and alumni were employed over the past several years in a concerted effort to attract more blacks to campus.

Middlebury, Smith, Pomona, and Grinnell colleges also posted gains in black first-year students of 100 percent or more. Bates, Colby, Amherst, Bryn Mawr, Macalester, and Haverford all showed gains of at least 50 percent.

Many of the colleges in northern New England such as Bates, Middlebury, Bowdoin, and Colby showed impressive gains because they started out a decade ago with so few black students. Yet the huge improvements show that these colleges in nearly all white rural areas have gone to great lengths to increase the racial diversity of their student bodies.

Amherst College and Haverford College both posted gains greater than 50 percent. Tom Parker, dean of admissions and financial aid at Amherst College, told JBHE that the college paid more attention to increasing black student yield than it had in the past. “We invested more money in bringing black and other minority students to campus,” Parker said. “We expanded the number of visitors to campus; once we get them here, we know we have a pretty good product to offer.”

Admissions officials at Haverford College told JBHE, “We have made an effort to build relationships with community-based organizations such as Prep for Prep, ABC, Teak Fellowship, and Philly Futures that work with talented black students.” Admissions officers also credit Haverford’s success in improving black enrollments to three multicultural weekend events held on campus.

Swarthmore College in suburban Philadelphia had the largest drop in black first-year enrollments in the 1998 to 2007 period. Black first-year enrollments at Swarthmore have had a history of a roller-coaster ride with wide fluctuations from year to year due mainly to a wide disparity in black student yield rates. This past year Swarthmore hit a down note, but only a year before Swarthmore had shown the highest percentage of black freshmen in our annual survey of liberal arts colleges.

Therefore, although almost all of the nation’s liberal arts colleges have shown significant increases in the 1998 to 2007 period, this one-year snapshot shows that a college such as Swarthmore with a record of superior performance in recruiting black students can have a bad year that is not reflective of its overall commitment to recruiting black students to its campus.

*The California Institute of Technology, ranked among the best universities in the United States, did not supply information on the number of black first-year students in 2007. Therefore, no comparison of the enrollment trend over the past decade can be made. Typically, JBHE records show only one or two black freshmen are enrolled at CalTech in any given year.

**See “Here Is Good News on Black Student College Graduation Rates,” JBHE, Number 58, Winter 2007/2008, p. 46.