A new report conducted by Journal of Blacks in Higher Education shows an increase in graduation rates for several HBCUs across the country.

Spellman, Howard, Jackson State and several others have gone up at least seven percentage points since 1998.

However, HBCUs still lag behind the general population in graduation rates.

For example, the graduation rate at Howard University in Washington, D.C., is now 64 percent, compared with 47 percent in 1998. Similarly, at Jackson State University in Mississippi, there was a 17 percentage point gain in graduation levels and an increase of 11 percent at Virginia Union University in Richmond since 1968.

However, the report said that the graduation rate for African-American college students continues to lag behind that of the general population.

“Financial factors are undoubtedly a major factor in the low graduation rates at many of the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities,” the report said. “Despite these factors that tend to put a drag on graduation rates, many HBCUs have made tremendous progress in recent years in increasing the graduation rates of their African American students.”

 

Increases weren’t found across the board; Prairie View A&M University in Texas, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Tennessee State University, and Lincoln University in Missouri are a few examples of schools that saw a decline.
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Does this increase prove that HBCUs are still crucial in a world where the post-racial myth still permeates

or is this report simply highlighting the struggles that HBCUs continue to have when comparing them to Universities in the overall population?

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