Title: Facts about race and ethnicity in college admissions
Headings: Facts about race and college admission
Facts about race and college admission
Political winds may shift, but racial factors in college success statistics don’t
Jon Marcus

Content: Enrollment at the 3,250 lowest-funded community colleges and four-year universities is 37 percent black and Hispanic. * These figures have been corrected to reflect the findings in the cited report. Larger and larger proportions of nonwhite students go to the least selective institutions with the fewest resources, whose nonwhite enrollment had grown from 31 percent in 1995 to 43 percent by 2009, the last period for which the figures were studied. Nearly a third of black and Hispanic students with high school grade-point averages of 3.5 or better end up at community colleges, compared to 22 percent of white students with the same grades, the Georgetown research found. Seventy-two percent of black students go into debt to pay for their educations, compared to 56 percent of white students, the Education Department reports. Nearly 72 percent of white students finish a four-year degree within six years, compared to 56 percent of Hispanic and 46 percent of black students, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center says. Thirty-three percent of white Americans 25 and older have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to 19 percent of blacks and 16 percent of Hispanics, according to the Education Department. This story about racial factors in college admissions and completion was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter. The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers.