Feature Story

March 25, 2008

Minorities and College; Teachers' Unions

From Ascribe Newsfeed:

Even though the number of black and Hispanic students entering college has increased dramatically over the last 30 years, students from these groups still lag well behind white students in earning college degrees, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis.

Michal Kurlaender, assistant professor of education at UC Davis, and co-author Erika Felts, a graduate student in sociology at UC Davis, presented their findings this morning at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in New York City. Their research will also appear in their forthcoming book, "Realizing Bakke's Legacy."

Kurlaender and Felts found that between 1972 and 1992, the percentage of black high school graduates who entered college rose from 46 percent to 69.5 percent and the percentage of Hispanic high school graduates who went to college climbed from 47 percent to 70 percent. However, the college completion rate for both groups fell.

In 1975, 38 percent of all blacks and 40 percent of all Hispanics who entered college completed their bachelor's degrees. By 2004, the percentages had dropped to 33 percent for blacks and 34 percent for Hispanics. The researchers based their conclusions on an analysis of data released in 2004 by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics.

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