The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education recently published its annual survey of Black first-year enrollment in leading national liberal arts colleges. The JBHE has tracked that information for the past 28 years.
For those of us who love data, there are some interesting nuggets in the report. The biggest story is that Amherst has set a new standard for enrollment of Black students, with 100 Black students in this year’s entering class, or a percentage of 19.5. Amherst has topped the list 13 times, more than any other college, with Wesleyan second topping the list six times.
Amherst is one of two liberal arts colleges enrolling 100 or more Black students in its first-year class. The other is Barnard, which enrolled 118. That is 15.3% of the entering class, placing it third by percentage. Number two is Harvey Mudd, with 17.7%, or 41 students. That is particularly impressive given that Harvey Mudd is focused on engineering, math, and science. Harvey Mudd is a great place with an even better name, but I don’t necessarily think of it as a liberal arts college.
In all, there are nine liberal arts colleges on the list with a Black first-year enrollment of 10% or more. In addition to the ones already mentioned, Swarthmore, Pomona, Haverford, Middlebury, and Bates fall into that category, with Bowdoin and Macalester just missing the 10% threshold by one student. In 2009, there were only three colleges on the list surveyed by JBHE with a Black first-year enrollment of 10% or more.
In contrast, there were six colleges in the JBHE survey which had entering classes with a Black enrollment below 6%--Lafayette, Grinnell, Smith, Bucknell, Scripps, and Mount Holyoke. Four of those schools–Smith, Scripps, Bucknell, and Mount Holyoke–saw declines in Black first-year enrollment from 2020, with Mount Holyoke’s being halved from 36 to 18. Lafayette actually saw a 65% increase in Black first-year enrollment from 26 to 43, while Grinnell’s 5.1% Black first-year enrollment outpaces the state of Iowa’s 3.7% Black population.
The Journal cautions not to draw too many conclusions from those statistics, as the numbers may say more about the way the data is reported than actual significant changes. Some colleges may be reporting figures that correspond with recent methodology changes put in place by the U.S. Department of Education. An Inside Higher Ed article about the JBHE survey points out that the DOE guidelines separate Black students from those who self-report as multi-racial or bi-racial and also exclude Black international students. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education survey has always counted any student identifying as being of African descent.
In addition to the reporting of numbers and percentages, there are two other lists provided by the JBHE. One is a list of one-year gains and losses. Two colleges, Bates and Harvey Mudd, saw an increase of more than 100%, and five other schools–Lafayette (already referenced), Oberlin, Middlebury, Barnard, and Hamilton–had increases above 45%.
I was particularly interested to see Washington & Lee among the top ten on the list with a 30% increase. I have previously written about the challenges W&L faces through its connection to Robert E. Lee, who served as President there from 1865-1870, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and the removal of Confederate monuments around the country, most prominently in my hometown of Richmond, Virginia, capital of the Confederacy. The W&L university community has discussed, but thus far pushed down the road, a decision about changing its name. I have seen W&L described as the least diverse national liberal arts college, and I have suggested that the association with Lee could prevent the University from being the national institution it aspires to be. I greatly respect the Washington & Lee admissions staff (full disclosure–I have served as a guest faculty member at their MAZE program for children of alumni), and am glad to see them making progress at a time when they face a number of barriers to doing so.
The third list reported by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education involves racial differences in admission rates. That list is limited by the fact that only 14 liberal arts colleges were willing to report that data, whereas in the past nearly all of the colleges in the survey were forthcoming about their admit rates for Black applicants. The JBHE theorizes that colleges are reluctant to be transparent because of efforts to challenge race-based affirmative action.
Two colleges, Middlebury and Scripps, show significantly higher admit rates for Blacks compared with their overall rates. Middlebury’s 31.5% Black acceptance rate is double its overall rate of 15.7% while Scripps admitted 42.6%, 13 points higher than the overall 29.5% rate. Most of the other colleges reporting data have comparable Black and overall admission rates, although both Bucknell and Macalester have admit rates for Blacks that are more than 10% lower than their overall rates.
How should we interpret this data? Once again, the JBHE cautions against jumping to conclusions. It states, “While no firm conclusions can be made, the fact that for the past 10 years there are now more colleges with overall acceptance rates that are higher than Black acceptance rates, causes one to wonder if there has been some curtailment in colleges’ consideration of race in admissions decisions. Or it may be that the colleges that have a much higher acceptance rate for Black students than they do for the applicant pool as a whole, are unwilling to publicize this information in fear of litigation or do not wish to anger some contributing alumni who are not in favor of race-sensitive admissions.”
I’m grateful for the data. I am a product of a liberal-arts college, although not one prestigious enough to be part of the survey (but nevertheless a good place that happens to be the newly-crowned NCAA Division 3 national champions in men’s basketball). I have always believed that the liberal arts college is America’s unique contribution to higher education, but many of those colleges have historically been bastions of whiteness. I applaud those liberal arts colleges that are working to make sure that they embrace and attract a student population that reflects the nation’s diversity and that small private colleges do not resemble private clubs.