Legal Commentary

Black Acceptance Rates

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education has recently published its useful survey of the first year enrollment figures for blacks at 20 of the nation's top rated universities, public and private, for 2008.

Nothing too surprising in the data. Brown, for example, admitted a little over 13% of all applicants but 22% of black applicants. The University of Virginia admitted 36.3% of all applicants but 47.4% of black applicants.

There are, however, two issues about this survey that are worth pointing out. First, the data would be much more useful if the "overall student acceptance rate" were disaggregated, since that category includes the black applicants. That is, the most relevant comparison is between the black acceptance rate and the acceptance rate for whites and Asians, not between blacks and the entire pool that contains the blacks.

Second, although there is no reason for this to be a surprise, is the refusal of several of the listed colleges to reveal the number of blacks accepted or their black acceptance rates. The most egregious of these was, again not surprisingly, the University of Michigan, which refused to reveal even the number of its black applicants. The only number it was willing to reveal was the number of black enrollees, 374, the largest of any of the 20 schools.

Full post as published by Discriminations on February 04, 2009 (boomark / email).