A new college ranking, designed to help students and their parents
evaluate an institution’s academic and social appeal for African
Americans, hits newsstands.
WASHINGTON
A new list ranking the nation’s “Top 50” colleges for
African American students is attracting attention from list-leary
academics and rekindling debate over the merits of ratings.
The list, featured in this month’s Black Enterprise magazine, could
influence the decisions made by more than 500,000 African American
freshmen who will start college next year.
Published by Black Enterprise magazine and DayStar Research, the
list ranked Spelman College and Morehouse College first and second
respectively. Another Atlanta institution, Clark Atlanta University,
was ranked fourth.
The list, developed by Dr. Thomas LaVeist, a sociologist and an
associate professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins
University, was designed to help make choosing a school less daunting
for today’s college-bound African American students and their parents.
LaVeist asked 1,077 African American higher education professionals
to rate colleges by the academic and social environments that are
provided for African American students.
Florida A&M University, last year’s Time magazine “College of
the Year,” ranked third on the Black Enterprise/DayStar list. The other
institutions filling out the top ten are: Howard University,
Washington, D.C.; Xavier University, New Orleans; Hampton University,
Hampton, Va.; Tuskeegee University, Tuskegee, Ala.; North Carolina
A&T University, Greensboro, N.C.; and Stanford University, Palo
Alto, Calif.
