An Analysis of Enrollment Data for Black Students in Institutions of Higher Education, from 1940-1972

Abstract

This paper has several purposes: first, to examine enrollment figures for Blacks in college during the period from 1940 to 1972; second, to develop a statistic which the author feels is more significant than either enrollment figures or percentages in order to determine exactly what progress is being made by Black college students; and finally, using this new statistic to predict at what point in time Black students will exist on college campuses in the same proportion as Blacks in the population. Throughout this paper when I refer to Black college students I am referring to all Black students in colleges in the United States. I want to say at the outset that it has been difficult to obtain accurate data for the number of Black college students. This was especially true in the earlier period of the investigation. Another problem that develops when one examines available statistics on this subject is that slight deviations exist in the figures. From my observation, the deviations exist because certain statistics refer to the number of undergraduate Black students, and others refer to both undergraduate and graduate enrollment. The figures that are used in this paper have come from reports issued by the United States Census Bureau. It is at this point that I wish to express my thanks to Mrs. Mary F. Grady, Community Services Representative for the Chicago Office of the Census Bureau, for the assistance that she has given me over the past year in the collection of necessary data. Table I gives the known values of the percentage of Black college students and the percentage of Blacks in the United States during the period 1940 to 1972. The data in Table I show that the enrollment of Black college students has risen from 2 per cent in