African-Americans and Education
Educational Attainment
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The percentage of young ( 25 to 29-year-old ) African Americans and whites who have completed high school (including GED's) has risen dramatically since 1960. Among young African Americans, the percentage of high school graduates rose from 39% in 1960 to 86.8% in 2000. During the same period, high school completion among young whites grew by nearly a third, from about 62% to near universality (94%).
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High school completion rates for 25-to 29-year-old Hispanics have not risen as much as those for other groups over the past 30 years, and they remained much lower than the rates for others in 2000 (62.8%). This may largely reflect the relatively high percentage of immigrants without high school diplomas among Hispanics.
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The percentages of white and Hispanic women aged 25 to 29-years-old who completed high school have equaled or surpassed the percentages for white and Hispanic men, respectively, since 1981. During that period, black men and women have reversed positions several times.
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College and Advanced Degrees
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Among adults age 25 and older, about 78.5% of African Americans had at least a high school diploma in 2000, and 15.5% had a bachelor's degree or a higher degree. The parallel percentages for whites were 88.4% (high school diploma) and 27.6% (bachelor's degree or higher).
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In 2000, blacks were almost as likely to have earned associate's degrees as were whites (6.4% versus 8.1%); the percentage for Hispanics (4.7%) was lower. Gaps in attainment were larger among those with bachelor's degrees: 10.9% of African American and 7.8% of Hispanic adults had B.A.'s in 2000 compared to about 18.5% of whites.
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In the total population 25 to 29-years-old, college completion rates for women (30% ) exceeded those for men (28% ) in 2000. (Not illustrated on chart-Bureau of Labor Statistics).
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Relatively small percentages of adults had advanced degrees in 2000, and the percentage of whites who held them (9.1%) was more than twice the percentage of blacks (4.6%) and three times that of Hispanics (3.1%). African Americans (3.7% ) and Hispanics (1.9% ) were only one-half and one-third as likely as whites (6.2% ) to hold masters degrees in 2000. Professional degrees were four times more prevalent among whites (1.6%) than among blacks or Hispanics (0.6% and 0.7%), and whites were twice as likely to have doctorates (1.3% vs. 0.3% and 0.5%).
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International Comparison
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Among 25-to-34-year-old African Americans in the United States are more likely than young adults in Canada, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom to have completed high school, and more likely than those in Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France to have completed college.
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Despite their educational disadvantages in the United States, particularly in completing college, and important differences in the educational systems of different nations, it may surprise some that African Americans are among the more highly educated groups of workers in the industrialized world.
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Women ages 25 to 34 in the United States were much more likely to complete college than both men and women of the same age group in other large industrialized countries (with the exception of men in Japan). (Not illustrated on chart-National Center for Educational Statistics.
References
Bureau of Labor Statistics, College
Enrollment and Work Activity of 1997 High School Graduates
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/hsgec.nws.htm
Changing America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being by Race
and Hispanic Origin
http://www.access.gpo.gov/eop/ca/charts/index.html
Conrad, C. and M. Lindquist, "Improvements in Educational Attainment,
but Little Reward" Focus, September 1997.
Harrison, Roderick, "Working on the Educational Gap", Focus,
June 1999.
National Center for Educational Statistics, U.S. Rank in Educational Attainment
http://www.nces.ed.gov/pubs/esn/.
Prepared by Cassandra Cantave and Roderick Harrison for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. December 2001.