College access improves for black students but for which ones?

In July 2012, President Obama issued an executive order calling for a significant improvement in the educational outcomes of African-Americans, including by increasing college access and success for African-American students.

The order also discussed the historical barriers African-Americans have faced and overcome to get educated, including attending substandard, segregated schools. Recent statistics support a measured optimism in this mission. African-American students have made tremendous gains in high school graduation rates, increasing to 71% (DePaoli et al., 2015); in 2014, black high school graduates were more likely to enroll in college than their white peers by 71% to 67% (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014); by the year 2022, blacks are projected to have a 26% increase in enrollment in higher education (Hussar & Bailey, 2013).

While these statistics are encouraging, significant obstacles continue to impede educational opportunity for African-Americans. They include lower academic achievement and a lack of challenging college-preparatory classes. And recently, the rising ranks of black students who are immigrants or of mixed racial heritage has begun to conflate and pose a secondary challenge to African-Americans who are descendants of slavery and Jim Crow discrimination and for whom the benefits of affirmative action were intended.