National Institute on Aging

Nearly 3 Million Black Students Are Enrolled in Higher Education

The U.S. Department of Education recently released a report offering preliminary data on enrollments at colleges and universities in the fall of 2011. The data shows that in 2011, there were 21,554,004 students enrolled at higher education institutions in the United States. Of these, 2,966,463, or 13.8 percent, were Black or African American.

Blacks were 12.7 percent of all the students at state-operated colleges and universities and 11.5 percent of all students at private, nonprofit institutions. But Blacks made up a whopping 24.2 percent, almost one quarter, of all students in private, for-profit higher education institutions.

In 2011, there were 2,931,516 students enrolled in graduate schools in the United States. Of these, 327,056, or 11.2 percent were Black.


Comments (2)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

  1. Lee says:

    I’m not sure if this is good news, a sign of a trend or what. A follow up article with some analysis would be interesting.

    • Chris says:

      The number in private, for-profit institutions is disturbing, given their often low graduation rates and high student debt ratios.

Leave a Reply



Due to incidents of abuse and harassment that have occurred in the past, JBHE will not publish telephone numbers or email addresses of individuals in this space. If you want to contact someone in a particular article, we suggest you contact them directly not in an open forum.