Objective

The analysis of degrees conferred to students of color in the United States continues this year with the simple objective of bringing national attention to those institutions that contribute, in raw numbers, to the educational attainment of members of ethnic and racial minorities.

This is the fifth consecutive year that Black Issues In Higher Education has published these lists, which follow the same basic format as in prior years. The lists reflect degree production during the 1994-95 academic year, including all associate, baccalaureate, first professional, master's, and doctoral degrees that were awarded by accredited colleges and universities in the nation's fifty states and the District of Columbia. The institutions are ranked according to the total number of degrees awarded to minority students across all disciplines and in specific disciplines. For reasons of space, only the associate and baccalaureate lists are in this issue. Graduate and professional rankings will be carried in the next issue.

Excluded from this analysis are colleges and universities in Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and other commonwealths and protectorates, as well as postsecondary institutions within the fifty states and Washington, D.C. that are not accredited at the college level by an agency recognized by the United States Secretary of Education.

Data Source

The data for this study come from the United States Department of Education. It is collected through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) program completers survey conducted by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI). The survey requests data on the number of degrees and other formal awards conferred in academic, vocational and continuing professional education programs. Institutions report their data according to the Classification of Instructional Program (CIP) codes developed by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES). CIP codes provide a common set of categories allowing comparisons across all colleges and universities.

The astute reader may note that we have skipped a year in this series. Last year, we published the numbers that derived from the 1992-93 IPEDS completers survey. This year we have moved ahead to the 1994-95 dataset. In addition, we are able to provide preliminary figures for institutions for which 1995-96 data are currently available.

At the time these lists were generated, the 1994-5 data were still in a preliminary release. Our analysis showed however, that the vast majority of the accredited institutions included in this analysis had completed all required forms with one notable exception: Howard University. Therefore, we decided to use the more up-to-date figures for 1994-95 with the manual addition of Howard University derived from the hard copy of their completed survey.

Analysis of the 1995-96 preliminary data showed far more missing entries. We decided to include these figures where available as an additional piece of information, but we used the 1994-95 figures as the basis of selection and ranking.

A student's minority status is typically determined by a self-reported response from the student during his or her college career. Students are offered a set of categories from which to choose. The number and labels of these categories differ from one institution to another. However, when reporting enrollment or degrees to the federal government, institutions must map their categories to the standard federal categories: non resident alien; Black, non-Hispanic; American Indian or Alaskan Native: Asian or Pacific Islander; Hispanic; White, non-Hispanic: and race/ethnicity unknown. The minority categories - Black, non-Hispanic; American Indian or Alaskan Native; Asian or Pacific Islander; and Hispanic - include U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

There are 100 institutions on the list which combine all the minority groups by degree level. The lists for specific minority groups and for specific disciplines contains as many as fifty institutions each. A given list may have slightly fewer or more institutions because of ties in the rankings. For example, if there are four institutions that fall into the ninety-eight ranked slot, then the list includes all of them bringing the total number of institutions listed to 103. If, however, ten institutions are tied for the ninety-eight rank, all are excluded for reasons of space and so the list falls short at ninety-seven.

A specific list may also be short because only a small number of degrees are conferred to that minority within that discipline and/or degree level. For example, the list pertaining to doctoral degrees awarded to Native American students includes only nine institutions. We limited the lists to included institutions that awarded at least three degrees in each category.

Within each listing category (combination of degree level, minority group and discipline), the colleges and universities were ranked from high to low according to the total number of degrees conferred during the 1994-95 academic year. Each entry lists: the institution name; state of location; number of degrees conferred to women, men and both genders combined (the ranking criteria); a percentage column; and the total number of degrees conferred in 1995-96, if available.

The percentage column indicates how the number of minority degree recipients compares to all degree recipients at that institution within that discipline. For example, in the listing of baccalaureates conferred to African Americans in Business and Management, the percent indicates the proportion of all Business and Management baccalaureate degree recipients at that institution who were African American. If a particular college awarded fifty bachelors of business administration degrees and five recipients were African American, then the percent column would indicate 10.0. In other words, the percentage indicates the minority group representation in that particular category.

For the first time, with this year's analysis, I am providing some additional tables that focus on the Top 100 institutions in baccalaureate degrees conferred to African Americans. For all of these tables, I have listed historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) separately from traditionally white institutions (TWIs). The first column of each table reminds the reader how each institution ranks overall. It is immediately notable from these tables that the top ten ranked institutions, and seventeen out of the top twenty are in the HBCU group, even though the overall list contains only forty-two HBCUs.

The first of these tables shows five year trends in degrees conferred for the period 1990-91 through 1994-95. The last column of this table indicates the average annual percentage change over the five-year period. For example, the dramatic near three-fold increase in degrees awarded by Florida A&M that tops the list yields an 27.5% annual average percent change. The bottom row of each section of the table shows the overall totals for the HBCU and TWI groups respectively. It is quite interesting to note that the forty-two HBCUs conferred a larger number of degrees across this period but the rate of increase in baccalaureate degrees conferred to African Americans by these institutions is quite similar: 3.3 percent for the HBCUs, and 3.4 percent for the TWIs.

The second set of additional tables compares the number and percent of African American baccalaureate degree recipients, undergraduate students, and faculty at these Top 100 institutions. The 1994-95 degree completions data is here compared with the latest available federal data on enrollments (Fall 1995) and faculty (1993-94). Among the HBCU institutions, the proportion of African American undergraduate students is higher by an average of 27 percentage points than the percent of African American faculty (87%. compared to 60% overall). However, it is encouraging to note that with only six exceptions - and only one notable exception - the majority of faculty at these HBCUs is African American.

In the TWI list the percentage of African American baccalaureate degree recipients also tracks closely with the proportion of African Americans in the undergraduate student body. But there is a slightly larger gap overall with only 10 percent degree recipients, compared to 13 percent enrollment. However, the proportion of African American faculty at these institutions is, with few exceptions, very low, averaging only 4 percent. Only seven of these fifty-eight institutions have double-digit percentages of Black faculty. Furthermore, only one exceeds 20 percent an institution at which 60 percent of the student body is African American.

In general, the overall relationship between institution size (as indicated by number of students, number of faculty or total number of degrees conferred) and degrees conferred to African Americans is attenuated by differences between HBCU and TWI institutions. That is, the relatively smaller HBCUs graduate relatively larger numbers of African Americans than the larger TWIs. However within category, institution size strongly predicts the number of Black graduates.

Within HBCUs, the percentage of African American students does not correlate significantly with the number of degrees conferred to Blacks. Nor does the number of Black undergraduates correlate with the percentage of degrees conferred to Blacks. However, the proportion and number of Black undergraduates correlate with the percentage of degrees conferred to Blacks.

The proportion and number of African American undergraduates does relate to degrees conferred to African Americans among the TWIs. It appears that HBCUs as a group have attained a threshold of Black student participation above which changes in percentages or numbers matter less. Among TWIs however, the proportion of Black students influences the number who graduate and the number of Black undergraduates influences the proportion of Black graduates.

Analysis performed by

Victor M. H. Borden, Ph.D. Director, Information Management and Institutional Research Assistant Professor of Psychology Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)