The numbers of African Americans earning graduate degrees at
American colleges and universities from 1991 to 1995 increased at rates
more than double the general graduate student population.
Particularly noteworthy were the gains of African Americans earning
masters degrees. From 1991 to 1995, the annual average percent increase
was 9.6 percent for African Americans earning master’s degrees compared
to a 4 percent annual average increase for all students.
Other minority groups experienced similar growth rates in students
earning graduate degrees. Between 1991 and 1995 Asian Americans and
Hispanics both had a 9.5 percent annual average increase in earning
master’s degrees; anti Native Americans posted a 8 percent annual
average increase during the same period.
Education experts attribute the impressive growth figures largely to
efforts by universities to recruit and retain minorities at graduate
programs during the 1980s and early 1990s.
“What you see is the result of many years of work,” Dr. Anne Pruitt,
a scholar-in-residence at the Washington, D.C.-based Council of
Graduate Schools, said of minority outreach and retention program
development at the nation’s graduate and professional schools.
Pruitt, who has served as an associate dean at Ohio State
University, noted that during the 1980s the development of mentoring
initiatives, special research and fellowship programs, and other
retention programs helped bring about a more favorable climate at many
campuses for minority graduate and professional students.
The optimistic assessment of minority progress in graduate and
professional education is clouded, however, by the recent setbacks to
affirmative action programs in Texas and California, according to many
observers.
