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New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows large racial gaps in educational attainment in 2022. That year, 27.6 percent of African Americans over the age of 25 had obtained at least a bachelor’s degree. For non-Hispanic Whites, the figure was 48.2 percent.
Some 10.1 percent of Black adults held a graduate or professional degree compared to 15.7 percent of non-Hispanic Whites.
On the other extreme, nearly one in 10 African American adults had not graduated from high school. Only 4.8 percent of non-Hispanic White adults did not have a high school diploma.
When we break the figures down by gender, we see a major advantage for Black women. In 2022, 30.1 percent of Black women had obtained at least a bachelor’s degree and 12.3 percent had earned an advanced degree. For African American men, 24.6 percent had a least a bachelor’s degree and 8.3 percent had an advanced degree.
A study by researchers at Michigan State University found that between 1997 and 2019, 4,918 doctoral degrees were awarded by U.S. universities in the discipline of geography. Only 86 of these doctorates, or 1.64 percent, were awarded to African Americans. In no year between 1997 and 2019 did the number of African Americans earning a doctorate in geography exceed nine. In five of these years, there were either zero or one African American who was awarded a doctorate in geography.
The study found nine research universities that combined did not award one doctorate in geography to any nonwhite student during the entire period. Overall, they awarded 200 doctorates in geography during the 22-year period.
The authors found that the differential awarding of degrees was related to the differential funding by race to support the completion of doctoral degrees. Financial support for Black graduate students in the field is lacking, according to the authors.
Researchers recommend that graduate programs in geography follow a model adopted at Michigan State where at least one nonwhite student is recruited and financially supported each year. To demonstrate that the policy works, in the three years before the policy was passed (2015- 2017), there were three Blacks, two Latinx, and one Native American admitted and funded by the department. Three years after the policy was passed (2018–2020), there were 10 Blacks, three Latinx, and one Native American who were admitted and funded.
The authors believe that this approach can be successfully adapted and applied to other geography departments in the U.S. and that through such actions, racial inequity and differential treatment experienced by nonwhite American citizens in geography doctoral programs may be reduced, if not entirely eliminated.
The full study, “Assessing Changes in the Underrepresentation of Blacks, Latinx/Hispanics, and Native American Doctoral Students in U.S. Geography Programs, and a Model for Change: the Michigan State University Model.” was published on the website of the journal SN Social Sciences. It may be accessed here.
A new report from the Brookings Institution examines the progress African Americans have made in doctoral degree awards. Only about 2 percent of American adults hold a doctorate degree but the reports says that “the racial composition of those earning doctorates looks very different from the racial composition of the general population, raising questions of whether the benefits of racial representation in doctorate-level professions can be realized.”
In 1980, Black doctoral earners received about 40 percent of the doctorates they would have received if the percentage of doctorates equaled the Black percentage of the population. There has been significant improvement in the share of doctorates awarded to Black people, now at about four-fifths of what racial parity would call for.
The report asks: “How long will it take for URM groups to reach parity, given historical rates of improvement? As a rough calculation, the Black share rose from 43 percent to 79 percent in 39 years — a rate of almost 1 percentage point a year — with a remaining gap of 21 percentage points. Thus, if we assume similar trends in doctoral attainment and in demographic growth in the coming years, the answer is another 22 years for Black doctorates.”
But the overall figures hide the fact that Black research doctorates are much less likely to be in STEM fields than is true for other groups. And Black research doctorates are disproportionately in the field of education.
The report urges greater efforts to get Black undergraduates involved in research activities and for universities to offer greater financial aid for students from low-income families.
“The representation of underrepresented minority groups at the doctoral level has improved — indeed, it has improved substantially” the report concludes. “However, representation remains well below parity in the population and there seems to be little reason to believe ‘benign neglect’ will resolve the issue. Regardless of any future Supreme Court decisions, affirmative steps to attract underrepresented groups into programs at the highest levels of education — especially in STEM areas — continue to be needed.”
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