There are more than 1,500 students in this fall’s entering class. This is the largest first-year class in the university’s history and 17 percent more entering students than was the case a year ago. Increased enrollments have prompted a plan to build a new $75 million residential complex on campus.
After fielding offers from a wide range of top colleges and universities, the Wade quadruplets of Liberty Township, Ohio, are all members of the Class of 2021 at Yale University.
Alcorn State University in Mississippi reports that the first-year class is the largest in university history. There are 740 entering students this year, an increase of 38 percent from a year ago. Several other HBCUs have also reported impressive gains.
At the flagship campus at Bloomington, there are 1,907 African American students, a record number for this campus. Systemwide, there are 7,646 African Americans enrolled.
Prairie View A&M University in Texas, Claflin University in South Carolina, and Meharry Medical College in Nashville are all reporting record enrollment numbers for entering students.
The study found that in 2015, Blacks made up 6 percent of the entering students at the top schools but 15 percent of all college-age Americans, a gap of 9 percentage points. In 1980 the gap was only 7 percentage points.
The New York Times recently published its list of the Top Colleges Doing the Most for the American Dream. The rankings are based on the percentage of undergraduate students who receive federal Pell Grants as well as the net price students must pay to attend these institutions.
The report contains data on African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, American Indians and other ethnic groups. There are detailed tables on enrollments, educational achievement, retention, student behavior, degree attainments, and outcomes of education.
There was some backtracking at the most prestigious campuses. At the flagship University of California, Berkeley campus, the number of Black admits dropped from 401 to 375. At the University of California, Los Angeles, Black admits dropped from 624 to 571.
In January 1965, John Bradley became the first African American student at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro. Six other Black students entered the university in the fall of 1965. Catherine Davis, a sophomore transfer student, was the first African American student to be awarded a degree.
Blacks make up 12.6 percent of all students at the 270 member institutions of the Association of Theological Schools. But Blacks are only 7.7 percent of the faculties at these schools.
Recently, the nation’s highest-ranked colleges and universities informed applicants if they had been accepted for admission into the Class of 2021. Some of the nation’s most selective institutions provided acceptance data broken down by racial and ethnic groups.
At two-year colleges and schools, Blacks are 16 percent of all students at two-year, state-operated community colleges. But Africans Americans are 22 percent of all students at two-year, for-profit colleges.
Yale University is expanding its partnership with Matriculate, a nonprofit organization that uses students at high-ranking universities to provide online college advising services to high school students from low-income families.
A new report from the U.S. Department of Education reports that there were 20,389,307 students enrolled in degree granting institutions in the fall of 2015. Of these, 2,606,038 were African Americans.
From 1992 to 2013, the percentage of students in the public schools in Washington who were Black declined from 89 percent to 73 percent. But more than 88 percent of Black students in the District attend schools where at least 90 percent of all students are Black.
During the Fall 2014 semester Clark Atlanta University enrolled only 167 international students. Within two years that number has more than doubled. Some 87 percent of all foreign students at the university are from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The number of African Americans from California applying to the nine undergraduate campuses is up 4.8 percent from a year ago and up more than 10 percent from two years ago. The number of Black applicants from California is up at all nine undergraduate campuses this year.
Among the 938 students who were accepted in the early action process this year at Harvard University, 12.6 percent are African Americans. This is up from 9.5 percent a year ago.
The American Talent Initiative, funded by the Bloomberg Philanthropies, hopes to expand to 270 educational institutions nationwide. It has set a goal of enrolling and graduating 50,000 students from low-income families by 2025.
The Summer Venture in Business Program is a three-day, pre-college summer program that will familiarize potential business students from underrepresented groups with college academic and social life.
Of the 257 student accepted for early admission at Williams College, 27 self-identify as African American. Thus, African Americans are 10.5 percent of all early admits at Williams this year. At Wesleyan University, there was a whopping 56 percent increase in African American early applicants.
A decade ago, there were 1,110 Black students in the entering classes at the eight Ivy League schools. In 2016, there are 1,503, a 35 percent increase. Four of the eight Ivy League schools have an entering class that is more than 11 percent Black. A decade ago, the leader stood at 9.6 percent.
Over the past two years, African American enrollments in higher education have decreased by more than 270,000, or 6.6 percent. The Black percentage of total enrollments has dropped from 14.4 percent to 13.9 percent over the past two years.
This year 21,020 students entered medical school for the first time. Of these, 1,771 identified themselves as Black or African American. This is an increase of nearly 27 percent from three years ago. In 2016, Blacks made up 8.4 percent of new entrants to U.S. medical schools.
The university reports that there are 3,741 African Americans on campus this fall, an all-time high. But it must be pointed out that African Americans make up 12 percent of the student body at the university, whereas Blacks are 32.5 percent of the Louisiana population.
The study found that just 9 percent of all Black students enrolled in higher education nationwide attended high-ranking, state-operated research universities. For Whites the figure was 19 percent.
Last fall students at the University of Missouri issued a set of demands calling for Black faculty to increase from 3 percent to 10 percent by 2018. The university has countered with a plan to raise “minority” faculty from 6.7 percent to 13.4 percent over the next four years.
At Bowie State University in Maryland, 967 first-year students are on campus this fall. This is the highest number in university history. Clark Atlanta University in Georgia reports a 20 percent increase in first-year students.
Hampton University, Mississippi Valley State University, Dillard University, Alcorn State University, Kentucky State University, Bethune-Cookman University, North Carolina A&T State University, and Xavier University have all reported impressive gains in enrollments.
There are 1,862 Black students on campus. But they make up only 4.3 percent of the total student body. Black enrollments at the state’s flagship university are less than one half of what would be called for if racial parity were to prevail to the percentage of Blacks in the state’s population.
New data released by the university shows that there has been a significant drop in students of color from underrepresented groups. In 2015, students of color made up 28 percent of the entering class compared to 24 percent this year.
Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens reports the largest entering class in the past six years and there are more new students at Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis than at any time in the university’s history. For the first, time its residence halls are at full capacity.
According to U.S. News & World Report, the Medical University of South Carolina enrolls the fifth highest number of African American students among medical schools that are not considered historically Black institutions.
A new 188-page report from the U.S. Department of Education offers a wide-ranging summary of most of the important educational statistics on enrollment, financial aid, graduation rates, degree attainments etc. as they pertain to race all in one place.
While the number of Black students in the entering class at the University of Georgia is up 10 percent from a year ago, there is still a very long way to go before racial parity with the state’s Black population is achieved.
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