In a significant one-year change that scholars say deserves more scrutiny, first-time graduate school enrollment among African-Americans rose in 2011, bucking an otherwise downward trend among all other groups, according to a new survey being released today by the Council of Graduate Schools.
The survey—formally known as the CGS/GRE Survey of Graduate Enrollment and Degrees – found that, while graduate school enrollment declined overall in 2011, African-Americans “were the only U.S. citizen and permanent resident racial/ethnic group to experience an increase in first-time graduate enrollment between 2010 and fall 2011, a 4.4 percent gain.”
Meanwhile, total first-time graduate enrollment went down 1.7 percent. Among Whites it dropped 2.9 percent. It dropped 5.9 percent for Hispanics and .8 percent for Asian/Pacific Islanders, and 3.8 percent for American Indian/Native Alaskan students.
When asked what was behind the trend of more Black students enrolling in graduate school for the first time, Dr. Debra Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, stated plainly: “I don’t know.”
“This is the first year that we’ve seen anything like this,” Stewart told Diverse during an interview Thursday.
“It’s not obvious from any of the data we have why African-Americans shouldn’t be suffering the same declines as everybody else,” Stewart said. “Obviously it’s just something that we have to watch.”
Dr. Brian Bridges, executive director of the Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute of UNCF, said the one thing that struck him about the survey was the apparent growing diversity of fields of study being pursued by African-Americans.
