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Charles Hamilton Houston quote

 
  News & Views
 

Blacks Making Solid Progress in Graduate School Enrollments: Women Are in the Lead

While graduate enrollments for both black men and black women are on the rise, black women now make up 73 percent of all African-American enrollments in graduate programs in the United States.

A new report by the Council of Graduate Schools finds that African Americans continue to make good progress in enrollments in master’s and doctoral degree programs.

The data shows that in 2007 there were 170,167 African Americans enrolled in graduate education in the United States. They made up 13 percent of all graduate students. Therefore, in terms of enrollments in graduate programs, black Americans have reached parity in comparison to the black percentage of the U.S. population.

The progress has been steady and significant. From 1997 to 2007 black enrollments in graduate education have increased an average of 8 percent each year. This compares to an overall increase in graduate school en-rollments of 2 percent a year. Thus, black enrollments in graduate school are outpacing overall enrollment in-creases by a rate of 4 to 1.

In 2007 there were 33,638 African Amer-icans who were new entrants into graduate schools in the U.S. Of these, 23,896, or 71 percent, were black women. Overall, black women make up 73 percent of African-American enrollments in graduate schools nationwide.

Of the 170,167 Af-rican Americans who are enrolled in graduate school, 34 percent are enrolled in the field of education. For whites, 29 percent of all graduate students are pursuing education programs.

Business is the second most popular field for black graduate students. Sixteen percent of all African Americans in graduate school are en-rolled in business programs.
Social sciences is the third most popular graduate field for black students. Health sciences ranks fourth.

There are very few African-American students enrolled in graduate programs in the physical sciences, biological sciences, or engineering. White students are twice as likely as their black counterparts to be enrolled in graduate programs in both the humanities and the physical sciences.