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And
educators also stressed that the number should not obscure
the persistent achievement gaps affecting blacks both
in the South and nationally. In particular, black enrollment
rates for college-age students, while improving, still
lag well behind those of whites, as do the graduation
rates of black college students.
With
a college degree now almost a prerequisite for high-paying
jobs, those achievement gaps pose an economic threat
_ and the South will be on the cutting edge of that.
In 2005 about 61 percent of public high school graduates
in the South were white, the education board said, but
by 2018 that figure is expected to be 45 percent.
``We've
made tremendous progress, don't get me wrong,'' board
President Dave Spence said. But, he added, unless achievement
gaps narrow, ``we're going to be in trouble. We already
are in trouble, but we'll be in more trouble seven or
eight years down the road.''
The
latest report may not reflect precisely what many consider
the South, because the 16 states it covers also include
border states Kentucky, Delaware, West Virginia and
Maryland.
Still,
the report reflects the reality that many more Southern
blacks are enrolling in college. In those states, about
1.1 million black students were enrolled in college
in the fall of 2005, 52 percent more than a decade earlier.
The
increase has come largely from new and expanding public,
traditionally white universities and two-year colleges
rather than from historically black colleges, which
for many years shouldered nearly all the burden of higher
education for Southern blacks. Many of those schools
still exist, but their share of black enrollment in
the region has slipped from 26 percent to 19 percent
over the last decade.
``We've
removed a lot of the barriers and accepted that we will
have to provide higher levels of learning support in
the short term,'' said Erroll Davis, who oversees the
33 institutions in the University System of Georgia.
He noted that minority students arrive on campus with
lower levels of college preparedness on average.
Overall,
blacks represent 31.4 percent of all Georgia college
students, about 1 percent higher than the proportion
in the overall population. The proportion of blacks
in the state university system is about 24 percent _
higher than a decade ago but still below the population
as a whole.
The
number of Hispanics in higher education in the South
has also shot up sharply over the last decade _ by about
71 percent to about 552,000 in the region the board
studied. But unlike for blacks, it remains well below
the proportion of Hispanics in the region's population.
Nationally,
25 percent of Hispanics aged 18-to-24 attend college,
compared to 33 percent of blacks and 44 percent of whites.
That means the fastest-growing major group has the lowest
college-going rate _ an alarming long-term threat to
the goal of increasing the percentage of workers with
college degrees.
The
board's report did not calculate graduation rates for
its region, but an analysis done by The Education Trust,
a nonprofit group, on behalf of The Associated Press
calculated the graduation rates for the 16 states in
the board's report.
The
analysis, which applies only to four-year colleges,
found six-year graduation rates of 40 percent for blacks,
46 percent for Hispanics, and 56 percent for whites.
Nationally,
the rate is 41 percent for blacks, 44 percent for Hispanics
and 60 percent for whites.
___
On
the Net:
Southern
Regional Education Board: http://www.sreb.org
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