JBHE: Latest News for 1/15/09
The Black Colleges With the Highest Student Graduation Rates
By a large margin, the highest black student graduation rate at a historically black college belongs to Spelman College, the academically selective, all-women’s school in the city of Atlanta. In fact, Spelman’s black student graduation rate of 78 percent is higher than the black student graduation rate at 12 of the nation’s 57 high-ranking predominantly white colleges and universities examined in the current JBHE survey.
Spelman’s unusual strength shows in the fact that it has a higher black student graduation rate than such prestigious and primarily white colleges as Colby, Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, Bowdoin, Chapel Hill, and Carnegie Mellon.
Following Spelman in the rankings, the next-highest black student graduation rate among the HBCUs was at Howard University. At Howard, 62 percent of the entering black students go on to graduate within six years. Claflin University in South Carolina has a black student graduation rate of 60 percent. Hampton University, Morehouse College, and Elizabeth City State University, sadly, are the only other HBCUs that graduate at least half of their black students within six years.
Historically Black Colleges and Universities with the highest graduation rates, 2008
Spelman College 78%
Howard University 62%
Claflin University 60%
Morehouse College 56%
Hampton University 54%
Elizabeth City State University 51%
North Carolina Central University 49%
Tuskegee University 47%
Winston-Salem State University 46%
South Carolina State University 45%
