University black enrollment numbers low

Penn's black student population has remained fairly constant in size over the last decade, according to an annual report released last week by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.

Out of 1,220 black students that applied for spots in this year's freshman class, 353 were accepted. But only 144 of those actually enrolled, leaving Penn with a disproportionately low yield rate -- the number of students who matriculate at the University -- for black students.

Black students make up 5.9 percent of the current freshman class. The class's yield rate for black students is only 40.8 percent, significantly lower than the University's overall rate of 62 percent.

The annual study is based on a survey of admissions statistics collected from the nation's top universities. This year's data includes numbers from 23 national universities and 27 liberal arts colleges.

Penn's reported first-year enrollment of almost 6 percent places it 19th among the top national universities, according to the report.

Among the universities surveyed in 2002, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had the highest black enrollment at 12.5 percent, followed by Stanford University at 11.6 percent. Duke, which previously had the second-highest enrollment, is now ranked third at 10.4 percent. California Institute of Technology ranked last among the surveyed schools, with an enrollment of 1.2 percent of first-year students.

Penn's enrollment numbers have not shown much change in recent years. Over the last decade, four of the University's Ivy League peers have seen rises in black enrollment, and now all but Cornell University rank higher than Penn.

Yale has the highest black enrollment for an Ivy League school with 8.5 percent and ranks fifth overall. Princeton is only 0.1 percent behind, and Harvard, which has seen a decline in black enrollment from 9 to 6.8 percent over the last 10 years, is now ranked 13th overall, trailing both Brown and Columbia.

Penn's yield rate was 13th among the 22 schools that released their figures. The highest yield for black students was 64.6 percent at Stanford. Harvard, formerly considered the "the nation's gold standard in student yield percentage for both black and white students" according to the Journal, had a 61.2 percent yield, the report said. Dartmouth and Penn had the lowest yield rates for black students among the six Ivy League schools that released those figures.

The number of black students choosing Penn after being admitted has also remained fairly constant. In 1997, it was 38.7 percent, just two percentage points below the 2002 number.

"We're in this competition for elite student bodies, and we no longer look for the kind of diversity that includes both class as well as color that we once did, and so we end up with results like this," History Professor Robert Engs said. "I don't think that Penn, frankly, is doing anything different than other universities."

Engs said the fact that Penn is a "poor school" in comparison to some of its Ivy League peers may account in part for the University's relatively lower yield rate.

"We just don't have the scholarship money, and that's what makes the difference," Engs said, noting that rises in black enrollment at schools like Princeton may be tied to increased funds. "I really think a major factor in here that has to be looked at here is financial aid."

He noted that another factor is that "we simply have not tried hard enough, because there's a kind of assumption that Penn is naturally attractive because it's in a city with a [large black population]."

Engs said that over the last 25 years, the number of black students per class has been relatively constant -- there are 144 in the current freshman class -- although there was an effort to increase that number to 200 black students per every 2,000 students in the mid-1980s.

"We've never come close to achieving that," Engs said.

According to Journal Managing Editor Bruce Slater, overall trends in black enrollment have varied between institutions during the decade that the study has been conducted.

"Some schools have shown great progress, some have backtracked a little," Slater said. "There's no real general trend."

The study was developed as a way of gauging top institutions' success in attracting and admitting black students.

"We feel that their enrollment levels at our top universities is a very good sign of progress that they're making, and we decided to annually keep track of how many applications are being admitted to these top schools," Slater said.

He added that the Journal hopes that colleges and universities use the rankings to chart their own progress and increase outreach efforts to ethnic minorities.

"In the sense that all the top schools compete against one another for black students, I think they all want to attract a significant number of them, and if they know they're being ranked by us and other people about how well they do, I think maybe they'll try a little harder," Slater said. "I think that's one of the reasons we do it."

Among the top liberal arts colleges, Amherst College had the highest first-year African-American enrollment at 10.2 percent, followed by Williams College at 9.5 percent. The highest reported yield rate was 47.8 percent at Bowdoin College.

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