A new report from the United States Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics indicates that minority students are increasingly attending some form of higher education. The Chronicle of Higher Education points out that minority group members are "disproportionately" enrolling in public and for-profit colleges.
Some important points in the report, titled "Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups," include:
-Among students enrolled in college in 2008, about 81 percent of Hispanics and 79 percent of American Indians/Alaska Natives attended public institutions, higher than the percentages of Whites (73 percent), Blacks (68 percent), and Asians/Pacific Islanders (75 percent) who did so. Some 21 percent of White, 18 percent of Asian/Pacific Islander, and 17 percent of Black students attended private not-for-profit institutions, while 11 percent of Hispanic and 12 percent of American Indian/Alaska Native students did so. A higher percentage of Black students (15 percent) attended private for-profit institutions than did students of the other races/ethnicities shown (ranging from 6 to 8 percent).
-In 2008, about 29 percent of U.S. adults (25 years of age or older) had at least a bachelor's degree, including 52 percent of Asian/Pacific Islander adults, 33 percent of White adults, 20 percent of Black adults, 13 percent of Hispanic adults, and 15 percent of American Indian/Alaska Native adults.
The same report from September 2007 found that 32 percent of all undergraduates in 2004 were minority students.
