Graduates at the 2010 Undergraduate Commencement

Interesting news out of The Education Trust. They just released two reports on the black-white and Hispanic-white graduation gaps in public and private colleges and universities in the United States. Most universities graduate significantly more of their white than their minority students. Investigating this a bit more deeply, the Education Trust’s reports detail the colleges and universities with the highest and the smallest graduation disparities. Loyola University New Orleans was named one of eleven schools in the country that have high graduation rates — rates equal to those of their white students — for both black and Hispanic students.

According to the study, in 2007 Loyola had a student population that was 11.7% black and 11.9% Hispanic, with graduation rates 2.0% and 2.8% higher, respectively, for those subgroups than for white students. The fact that Loyola New Orleans is one of only 11 schools in the country to graduate equal rates of white, black, and Hispanic students is both a testament to this school but also to the lingering and pernicious racial gap in American higher education.

Other schools to graduate similar rates of white and minority students include private schools, like University of Miami and our fellow Jesuit university, Loyola Marymount, and public universities, like Georgia State, UC-Riverside, and Towson University in Baltimore. On the flip side, nine schools had particularly large graduation gaps for both black and Hispanic students.

-AJH