Compared to White adults in the United States, Black adults are two-thirds as likely to hold a college degree and Latino adults are only half as likely – with both groups attaining degrees at a lower rate in 2016 than White adults did back in 1990.
So say research findings in a new report by The Education Trust, which is calling on policymakers at the states level to take action to reduce the racial disparities. Given data that indicates that degree attainment is a direct path to upward social mobility, it’s important for the gap to be closed as minorities continue to comprise a growing segment of the workforce, according to the nonprofit educational advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.
“If state leaders are serious about racial equity and reaching their goals to increase the number of college-educated residents in their states, they need to be honest about what their data are telling them about Black, Latino, and other racial or ethnic groups,” said Dr. Andrew H. Nichols, co-author of the two briefs in the report and senior director of higher education research and data analytics at Ed Trust.
Research highlights – gleaned from U.S. Census data from 41 states for Black adults and 44 states for Latino adults between the ages of 25 and 64 – include:
In 2016, while 47.1 percent of White adults had attained some form of college degree, only 30.8 percent of Blacks and 22.6 percent of Latinos had.
The states with the largest White-Black gaps were Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Wisconsin; for White-Latino gaps, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts and Nebraska.
The states with the lowest degree attainment for Blacks were Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Wisconsin and West Virginia; for Latinos, they were Arkansas, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada and Oklahoma.
