African-American student enrollment at the University of Connecticut has been steadily rising over the last 10 years. But in most years, female African-American students outnumbered male African-American students.
The increasing number of African-American students at UConn falls in line with nationwide trends. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the percentage of black college and university students increased from 10 to 15 percent between 1976 and 2011.
Between 2000 and 2012, the number of male black students enrolled at “degree granting post secondary institutions” increased from around 635,000 to just over one million, while the number of female black students increased from 1,095,000 to around 1,900,000, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
The number of black students at UConn, however, has increased at an even faster rate – albeit based on a small sample size. Black male enrollment at the university rose from 385 in 2000 to 600 in 2013, or about 55 percent. Female enrollment, however, has increased faster still, rising from 460 in 2000 to 768 in 2013, or about 67 percent, according to UConn’s Office of Informational Research.
Alyssa Hughes, a 21-year-old African-American UConn student from Waterbury, Conn., said that mortality rate might correlate to there being fewer black male students than female black students at UConn.
“From my experience, college is more promoted for black males because, in some ways, that’s their only way out of where they are,” Hughes said. “I think that in comparison to why more women have gone than black males, and in consideration of this idea that more women are pushed to go to college than males, I would say that the mortality rate has something to do with it.”
Crime is certainly an obstacle that prevents a larger number of black men from reaching college. According to the NAACP, African-American men make up nearly half of the incarcerated population in the U.S. 35 percent of black children in grades 7–12 have been suspended or expelled at some point in their school career. The figure for whites is 15 percent.
“Black male violence has impacted the number of people going to college, because they’re locked up for a really long time, or they were killed in some incident in the neighborhood they lived in,” Hughes said.
When it comes to the African-American community and the police, Hughes said black women don’t face as many challenges as black men.
“Black women don’t face everyday police stereotyping,” she said. “Black women face those types of situations, but not as much as black males. Black men are more stigmatized to be negatively stereotyped before black women. And that all relates back to prison rates and a whole bunch of different things.”
Outside of the obstacles posed by the criminal justice system, Hughes said in her experience men in the African-American community look at higher education through a different lens.
“It also has something to do with the idea of, what is a black male career?” she said. “The idea of, ‘Oh, you should go be an athlete’ or ‘Oh, you should go be a musician. I don’t need school for this I’ll just go be a rapper.’ It’s just a lot harder for black males than black women when it comes to education.”
There are countless examples of American black men who “made it out” of a difficult upbringing by turning to music or sports. Kendrick Lamar – a California-based rapper whose most recent album, Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, has been on the Billboard Top 100 for over 100 weeks – is one of them. Lamar didn’t go to college. Instead, after relentlessly self-promoting his mix tapes and performing live, he clawed his way to the top of the charts and out of Compton, Calif., a notoriously volatile area outside Los Angeles.
Regardless of the sociological factors, based on the data it is clear that UConn is succeeding in attracting more black students. But Hughes said she isn’t convinced the university is doing enough to diversify its enrollment, nor does she believe its methods have been completely well intentioned.
“I do feel like our university is diverse, however diversity is promoted in a fictitious way,” she said. “It’s kind of promoted to promote the school, and not necessarily to promote diversity overall. When I go to the cultural centers, I feel like that’s the main place where I do see more african americans. It’s almost like we’re segregated, still. We only see each other when there are black events.”
“It’s a marketing system. It’s not a university that really cares about diversity.”