Black Enrollments on the Rise at a Large Number of Flagship State Universities

Several of the nation’s flagship state universities are reporting increases in black enrollments this fall.

• At Indiana University in Bloomington, there are 1,749 black students enrolled this year, the highest number ever recorded. Black enrollments are up 5 percent from a year ago.

• At the University of Kansas, black freshman enrollments are up 28 percent from a year ago. The number of African-American students on campus this year is the highest in the university’s history.

• At the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, black freshman enrollments are up a whopping 37 percent from a year ago. Blacks make up 10.3 percent of all first-year students.

• The University of Georgia reports that there are 381 black freshman students in this year’s entering class. This is the largest number of black freshmen at the University of Georgia since 1995. Black students make up 7.9 percent of the entering class.

• There are 2,194 black students at the University of Texas this fall. This is an increase of 4.1 percent from a year ago. Blacks are 5.6 percent of the freshman class and 4.4 percent of the entire student body.

• At the University of Colorado at Boulder, there are 472 black students enrolled, an increase of 9.3 percent from a year ago.

• The University of Kentucky reports that it enrolled more African-American freshmen this fall than at any time in its history. There are 341 black first-year students at the university this fall, up from 258 a year ago. This is an increase of more than 32 percent over last year. Blacks make up 8.4 percent of the freshman class. This is a significant level in view of the fact that blacks are just 7.2 percent of the overall Kentucky population.

• Rutgers University, New Jersey’s flagship state univer-sity, is regarded as one of the most diverse institutions of higher education in the United States. Rutgers reports a record number of freshman enrollments. More than 6,000 students enrolled at the main campus of Rutgers University this fall. More than half of the incoming students are non-Caucasians.

Universitywide, black first-year enrollments are up 13 percent from a year ago. Blacks are 9 percent of all enrollments at the flagship New Brunswick campus. African Americans are 17 percent of all undergraduates on the Camden campus and 19 percent of total enrollments on the Newark campus.

• The University of Missouri at Columbia reports that its freshman enrollments of 5,812 have increased 15.6 percent from a year ago. Black enrollments grew at an even greater rate of 27.5 percent. The number of black freshmen on campus is the highest in university history.

At the University of California at Berkeley and the Uni-versity of Michigan, two flagships that are prohibited by law from considering race in admissions, black freshman enrollments are up this year compared to a year ago. However, black freshman enrollments remain well below historical highs.

Not all the flagship state universities had good news to report this year;

• At Ohio State University in Columbus, the news is disappointing. There are 363 black freshmen at Ohio State this fall, a decrease of 11 percent from a year ago.

• The flagship campus of the University of Florida in Gainesville reports that there are 671 black freshmen on campus this fall. This is a very large decrease of 27 percent from a year ago.

• As we show on page 44 of this issue of JBHE, there was a large 20 percent drop in black freshman enrollments at the University of Virginia. In 2007 there were 360 black first-year students on the Charlottesville campus. This year there are only 287 black freshmen.

• There are 23 fewer black freshmen at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This is a drop of 5.2 percent.