By Alice Dembner Boston Globe
Black women are graduating from college and graduate school in record numbers, outstripping the progress of white women and earning bachelors' and master's degrees at nearly twice the rate of black men, a new study shows.
Black men also posted increases in some areas of higher education, but earned 10 percent fewer masters' degrees and 20 percent fewer doctorates in 1994 than in 1977.
"African-Americans are recognizing more and more the importance of a college degree," said William H.Gray III. President of The College Fund, which commissioned a comprehensive report on blacks in higher education. "The trends are very positive, but there are also significant causes of concern."
The 500-page report compiles data from a host of sources in an effort to provide a factual basis for future policy decisions, Gray said.
Among the findings:
Blacks make up 10.1 percent of students at American colleges and universities, up from 8.8 percent a decade ago, but still below the 14.3 percent they represent of the U.S. collegiate population.
Despite enrollment gains, blacks still earn a disproportional small share of degrees at all levels from associate's to doctorate. But blacks made significant gains over the last two decades in the area of professional degrees, with black women earning more than twice as many law and medical degrees in 1994 as in 1976. A year after graduating from college, blacks were nearly twice as likely as whites to be unemployed.
Blacks represent less than 5 percent of college faculty in 1992, and much smaller percentages at some research universities. While black female faculty have salaries and rank comparable to white women, only 29 percent of black males were full professors compared with 41 percent of white men.
Two-thirds of black students attended their first choice college, compared with three quarters of white students.
Nearly a third of blacks at four-year universities had family incomes below $20,000, compared with only 9 percent of whites. A higher percentage of blacks than whites received financial aid at these schools, but the average grants were comparable, as was the percentage getting aid based on merit, not need.
White enrollment at historically black colleges rose 71 percent from 1976 to 1994, while black enrollment at those schools rose 26 percent.
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