Sunday, May 11, 2008

Blacks earning less doctoral degrees

A recent study done by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education states that Black are earning fewer doctoral degrees. The following is an excerpt of Blacks earning fewer degrees by Jayne Matthews:

“A college degree is a ticket to middle class life”- Dr. Calvin Burnett, President Emeritus, Coppin State University

Dr. Burnett's words have proven to true for thousands of college graduates. For a small, but growing group of Africans Americans it was also the passport to the prestige of earning a doctoral degree and the economic power to enter the upper middle class.

However, after almost two decades of uninterrupted progress, the number of blacks receiving doctoral degrees has declined by 10 percent for two consecutive years. According to a report recently published in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, blacks earned 7.1 percent of all doctorates awarded in the United States in 2004 and 6.2 percent in 2006. Here is an excerpt from the article titled “Once Again, a Decline in Doctoral Degree Awards to African Americans.”

Despite the setback of the past two years, the overall progress in the past two decades has been rock solid. In 1987 only 787 African Americans earned doctorates. This year's total of 1,659 doctorates is more than double the number earned by African Americans in 1987. In 1990 the black share of all doctoral awards was 3.6 percent. That has now grown to 6.2 percent, a showing of significant progress in a relatively short period of time of 17 years.

Although African Americans have made solid progress in doctoral awards, much remains to be achieved. African Americans are nearly 13 percent of the U.S. population. Therefore, black doctoral awards still amount to less than one half the level that would occur were racial parity to prevail.

The bad news is that there continue to be wide differences among blacks and whites in terms of the academic fields in which they earn doctorates. For instance, 36.5 percent of all doctorates awarded to African Americans in 2006 were in the field of education. In contrast, only 17.8 percent of doctorates earned by whites were in this field. This large percentage of all African-American doctorates in the field of education has been the case for decades with only minor fluctuations.
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