Black enrolment in HE continues to lag in many states
Alarms sounded at the University of Maryland (U-Md) in the United States when the class of 2022 arrived at College Park. Seven percent of freshmen in fall 2018 were black, down from 10% the year before and 13% in 2014 and marking a nadir for a metric crucial to the flagship university’s commitment to diversity in a state where about a third of public high school graduates each year are black, write Lauren Lumpkin, Meredith Kolodner and Nick Anderson for
The Washington Post.
U-Md’s admissions team resolved to reverse the trend, with urgent outreach to high school seniors who had started applications but not finished them. It helped. The black share of freshmen rebounded the next fall to 10%. The episode underscored the enduring disconnect between the racial demographics of many flagship universities, including U-Md, and the population of states they serve. Fifteen state flagships had at least a 10-point gap between the percentage of black public high school graduates in their states in 2019 and the black share of freshmen they enrolled that fall, according to federal data analysed by the