Campus news in brief

According to a January 10 press release by the [ITAL]Journal of Blacks in Higher Education[ITAL], Carnegie Mellon’s black student graduation rate is 67 percent, the lowest among top universities. In contrast, the [ITAL]Journal[ITAL] reported a 84 percent graduation rate for white students. The report was a follow-up to an article in the publication’s fall issue on black student enrollment at top American universities, which evaluated Carnegie Mellon and other institutions based on acceptance rate, retention rate, and percentage of black first-years.

The press release claimed that the university’s heavy emphasis on science could be a factor in the relatively low graduation rate of black students.

Bruce Slater, editor at the Journal, believes that scholarships ending after the first year may also have prevented black students from completing school, according to a January 11 article in the [ITAL]Pittsburgh Post-Gazette[ITAL]. However, Slater noted that the university has improved by 20 percent since 1998, the second-highest improvement for all the schools surveyed.

Nationally, the black student graduation rate is 43 percent. The [ITAL]Journal[ITAL] defines the national rate as the percentage of the members of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Division I who graduate within six years.