The New Student in Black Colleges

Abstract

The proportionate enrollment of blacks in America's institutions of higher education still falls alarmingly below their 12 percent representation in the college-age group in the U.S. population. Nevertheless, in recent years, the entry rate of black students into college has been accelerating faster than have student admissions in general. Black college students now number almost half a million, their enrollment having doubled over the six-year period between 1964 and 1970.1 Much of this long-overdue increase in black enrollment has been taking place at institutions other than the approximately 100 traditionally black colleges and universities that have played a historic role in providing higher education to black youth in our society. Out of every 100 black students who entered college in 1971, only thirty-five went to predominantly black four-year colleges and six went to predominantly black junior colleges; of the remaining fifty-nine, twenty-five went to predominantly white junior or community colleges, twenty attended predominately white four-year colleges, and fourteen enrolled in predominantly white universities.2 The changing distribution of black college students is attributable, in part, to the limited financial support for the development and expansion of predominantly black in-