Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Closing the Gap

Jake New
Inside Higher Ed
March 1, 2017

Black students graduate, on average, at a rate 22 percentage points lower than white students. Closing that gap will require individual institutions to improve completion rates and highly selective colleges to enroll more black students, a new report says.

Only 41 percent of black students who start college as first-time freshmen earn a bachelor’s degree within six years -- a rate more than 20 percentage point below that of white students.

While that’s the national average, a new report from the Education Trust, a nonprofit organization that advocates for minority and low-income students, suggests that the average gap at individual institutions is just two-thirds that wide. And that means if higher education collectively is going to close the completion gap, it will take more than just boosting graduation rates on individual campuses. Highly selective colleges with high graduation rates must also enroll more black students, the report concludes.

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