RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) -- For the first time ever in the South, blacks are as well represented on college campuses as they are in the region's population as a whole -- something not yet true of the country overall.The milestone is noted in a new fact book to be released Monday by the Southern Regional Education Board, a nonprofit organization that promotes education.
In the 16 states measured, the number of blacks enrolled in colleges has risen by more than half over the last decade. They now make 21 percent of college students and 19 percent of the overall population.
The number represents progress but it also has to be seen in context. A major contributing factor is the South's rapidly growing Hispanic population, which has reduced the proportion of the population that is black, and thereby made the milestone easier to reach mathematically.
And educators also stressed that the number should not obscure the persistent achievements 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.
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