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Who Produces Black Ph.D.'s?

September 2, 2008

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Black students have their choice of college in a way that was not nearly as true decades ago, a fact borne out by the numbers: In 2006, one in five African American bachelor's degree recipients earned their diplomas from historically black colleges and universities, compared to well over a third in 1977.

But even as they are educating a smaller proportion of black undergraduates, historically black colleges and universities are graduating a growing share of black Americans who go on to earn Ph.D.'s in science and engineering, a new report from the National Science Foundation reveals. The results suggest that the institutions are doing something different -- and important -- for the undergraduates they enroll.

The report takes a historical look at the undergraduate institutions attended by African Americans who received doctorates in science and engineering fields over the last 30 years. In some ways, the data show the ebb and flow of the centrality of historically black institutions in the education of black Americans. In the late 1970s, when more than 35 percent of black undergraduates attended historically black institutions, more than 40 percent of black doctorate recipients in science and engineering had earned their bachelor's degrees from those institutions.

But as many predominantly white institutions opened their doors to black students and intensified their recruitment of the best of them through the 1980s and 1990s, the proportion of African American science Ph.D. recipients who received their undergraduate degrees from historically black colleges fell into the low 20s, as seen in the table below.

Interestingly, though, the pattern has shifted in recent years. Even as the proportion of all black undergraduates who attend historically black colleges and universities has continued to decline, the proportion of black doctorate recipients (U.S. citizens and permanent residents) who earned degrees at those institutions has climbed steadily this decade, the report shows:

Undergraduate Institutions of Black Ph.D. Recipients in STEM Fields, 1986-2006

Year	All institutions	Number Educated at HBCU's	% Educated at HBCU's
1986	356	89	25.0
1987	350	99	28.3
1988	389	103	26.5
1989	396	104	26.3
1990	405	85	21.0
1991	503	119	23.7
1992	442	109	24.7
1993	526	121	23.0
1994	544	120	22.1
1995	610	165	27.0
1996	620	151	24.4
1997	668	145	21.7
1998	708	175	24.7
1999	773	207	26.8
2000	784	192	24.5
2001	767	204	26.6
2002	761	196	25.8
2003	742	195	26.3
2004	857	242	28.2
2005	828	239	28.9
2006	866	254	29.3

Historically black institutions produced more black Ph.D. recipients than any other type of institution in 2006. Next in line were intensive research universities with 240 Ph. D. recipients, other doctorate-granting universities with 117, master's granting colleges with 96, and baccalaureate colleges with 61.

Black colleges as a group were even more likely to have produced Ph.D. recipients when the numbers are examined per capita based on their enrollments. In 2006, alumni of historically black institutions received 10.1 doctorates per 1,000 bachelor's degrees they awarded to black students, compared to 7.9 percent for non-black colleges, as seen in the table below:

Number of Black Ph.D. Recipients Produced Per 1,000 Black Bachelor's Degrees Awarded 9 Years Earlier

Year	Historically Black Colleges	Non-Historically Black Colleges
1986	4.2	6.2
1988	5.0	6.0
1990	4.4	6.5
1994	7.0	9.0
1996	9.1	10.2
1998	11.0	10.9
1999	12.7	11.1
2000	10.7	10.7
2001	10.3	9.3
2002	9.0	9.1
2003	8.3	7.7
2004	10.1	8.6
2005	9.4	8.0
2006	10.1	7.9

Ansley Abraham, director of the State Doctoral Scholars Program at the Southern Regional Education Board, which aims to produce minority faculty members, said the data "make clear the importance of historically black colleges and universities in producing doctoral recipients." Neither the data nor the NSF report offer any insights into " why a disproportionately high number [of graduates of HBCU's] are going on to seek advanced degrees," Abraham said, but he offered a couple of possible explanations.

First, he surmised that historically black colleges, many of which tend to lean less heavily on standardized test scores in admitting students, "may be on to something in the criteria they use to select kids that is not born out of how they did on the SATs and ACTs -- picking up on drive or something else" that the institutions then nurture once the students are on their campuses, Abraham said. He also said that because graduates of historically black colleges are emerging from their institutions "without the baggage that goes with being a minority on a majority campus," they "perhaps have a little bit more energy and drive to go on for more education. That's just a theory," Abraham said.

Michael L. Lomax, president and CEO of UNCF: United Negro College Fund, attributed the strong showing of historically black institutions to their traditional emphasis on encouraging their graduates to pursue post-baccalaureate education and to an increasing emphasis at many institutions on science and technology. "Our institutions have really emphasized the undergraduate degree as the launching pad, and generally the culture says to go to graduate and professional school," Lomax said.

And at certain institutions, such as Xavier University of Louisiana and Spelman College, students are strongly encouraged toward scientific disciplines and involved in undergraduate research that prepares them for the sort of work they will do in graduate school, said Lomax. "There is a kind of intentionality and purposefulness here."

Lomax said the performance of historically black colleges and universities in producing black doctorate recipients is all the more noteworthy because the institutions receive "disproportionately fewer dollars [in federal research support] than comparable institutions do."

"When you look at the NSF dollars that go to HBCU's, they don't reflect the disproportionate production of graduates in the fields the NSF cares most about," Lomax said. "It would nice to see the money reflect the kinds of disproportionately strong production that is coming out of these typically underresourced institutions."

The following table compares two lists of the top 50 institutions whose African American graduates went on to receive doctorates between 1997 and 2006. On the left are the institutions in pure numbers; the right side shows the number of black Ph.D. recipients that institutions produced for every 1,000 black recipients of bachelor's degrees nine years earlier.

Institutional Production of Black Bachelor's Degree Recipients Who Earned Ph.D. Recipients		Producers of Black Ph.D. Recipients, Normalized for Undergraduate Black Enrollments
	No. of Black Science Ph.D.s Produced, 1997-2006	Institution	No. of Black Science Ph.D.'s Produced, 1997-2006	No. Produced per 1,000 Black Bachelor's Degree Graduates 9 Years Earlier
Howard University	224	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	58	112.6
Spelman College	150	Swarthmore College	17	85.9
Hampton University	135	Princeton University	47	70.7
Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University	100	Harvard University	73	64.2
Morehouse College	99	Amherst College	15	55.6
North Carolina A&T State University	89	Brown University	50	54.0
Southern University A&M College at Baton Rouge	88	Yale University	48	52.9
Xavier University of Louisiana	79	Wellesley College	18	52.3
Harvard University	73	Carnegie Mellon University	14	50.4
University of Maryland at College Park	72	University of Chicago	14	49.8
Tuskegee University	71	Oberlin College	22	48.7
Morgan State University	64	Vanderbilt University	21	47.3
University of California Berkeley	64	University of California Santa Cruz	19	45.6
Jackson State University	63	Colgate University	11	44.4
University of Virginia, main campus	63	Spelman College	150	41.8
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor	62	Stanford University	50	41.2
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	58	Vassar College	16	41.0
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	54	Columbia University in the City of New York	32	39.5
North Carolina State University at Raleigh	51	Case Western Reserve University	13	39.4
Brown University	50	Wesleyan University	20	38.9
Stanford University	50	Rice University	11	38.3
Yale University	48	University of Pennsylvania	43	38.1
Princeton University	47	Johns Hopkins University	15	37.5
Cornell University, all campuses	46	Duke University	34	36.8
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	45	Williams College	12	35.9
Clark Atlanta University	43	Tougaloo College	41	35.9
Prairie View A&M University	43	Wake Forest University	15	35.8
University of California Los Angeles	43	Cornell University, all campuses	46	34.4
University of Pennsylvania	43	University of California Irvine	21	33.8
Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University	41	Tulane University	25	33.7
Rutgers University New Brunswick	41	George Washington University	19	30.8
Tougaloo College	41	College of William and Mary	19	30.5
University of South Carolina at Columbia	41	Fisk University	37	30.0
CUNY City College	40	Dartmouth College	17	29.7
Norfolk State University	40	Washington University	19	28.4
North Carolina Central University	40	Emory University	25	27.1
Wayne State University	38	Andrews University	14	26.5
Fisk University	37	Iowa State University	17	25.2
Temple University	37	University of California Riverside	12	25.1
Florida State University	36	Georgia Institute of Technology, main campus	32	24.7
Michigan State University	35	Miami University, all campuses	14	24.4
Tennessee State University	35	Morehouse College	99	24.4
Duke University	34	University of Michigan at Ann Arbor	62	24.3
Grambling State University	34	Xavier University of Louisiana	79	24.1
University of Texas at Austin	34	University of California Berkeley	64	24.0
CUNY Hunter College	33	University of California Davis	26	24.0
Columbia University in the City of New York	32	University of Virginia, main campus	63	23.9
Georgia Institute of Technology, main campus	32	University of Wisconsin Madison	17	22.6
Pennsylvania State University, main campus	32	University of Miami	24	22.1
University of Maryland Baltimore County	32	University of Maryland Baltimore County	32	21.6

— Doug Lederman

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Comments on Who Produces Black Ph.D.'s?

Posted by Karen on September 2, 2008 at 10:05am EDT
It is interesting to note that Spelman College rather with the second highest number of doctorates is a very well-known women's HBCU. It would have been interesting to see whether there are any differences attributable to gender.

Undergraduate Research
Posted by Jean on September 2, 2008 at 10:15am EDT
Anyone who has run or worked with an URM undergraduate research program or worked on recruiting URM graduate students knows that the best students come out of HBCUs or other competitive, good undergraduate institutions that do not offer PhD programs. These institutions offer their students more opportunities at the undergraduate level to do research - they have a better understanding of what a PhD program in the sciences is really going to be like and the opportunity to work more closely with faculty - they are thus better prepared and more motivated and they see that they are not alone, that there are lots of others like them doing what they want to do.

Posted by MB on September 2, 2008 at 10:25am EDT
Two other possible reasons for the higher number of Phd students coming out of HBCUs exist. One is that students are able to see many, many other African-Americans who have already taken that route and joined the faculty. Second, because there are so many more African-American Phd holders to interact with on campus it may be easier to connect with a faculty member who gives encouragement and support. Just being African-American doesn't guarantee you'll connect or get along, so having more mentors of color to chose from may make a difference.

Who's Producing Black Ph.Ds
Posted by Shireen Lewis, Ph.D. , Executive Director at EduSeed on September 2, 2008 at 11:05am EDT
To the question: "Who's Producing Black Ph.D.s?" should be added: "and with what kinds of resources?" In a lot of cases it is indeed with minimal resources.
We at SisterMentors do not have the resources of either a predominantly white institution or a HBCU, yet in a little over 10 years, we have helped 30 women of color --- most of them Black women --- to complete their dissertations and get their doctorates. Many of these women are now professors at predominantly white universities and at HBCUs.
I agree, why isn't funding going to those who are getting results and making an impact?

Anachronisms
Posted by Prof. Challenger on September 2, 2008 at 11:05am EDT
Why are we even talking about this? Seems to me either we relegate the idea of "white" and "black" colleges to the ashbin of history, where the concept belongs, or we perpetuate an unhealthy fixation on separate institutions for "colored" and "white."

‘Who Produces Black Ph.D.’s?’
Posted by F H Staley on September 2, 2008 at 11:10am EDT
Bottom Line:
At 99.9% of HBCUs, students are more than simply a number on a roster assigned to a graduate assistant in a classroom with 150+ other faces.
At most HBCUs, students have true interaction w/ their professors (20-1 or less student to teacher ratios all 4 years), many of whom you can easily see during other than "official" office hours. . .

To Professor Challenger:
Posted by RC , grad student on September 2, 2008 at 2:55pm EDT
It is still relevant today because people are still "racialized" and we STILL live in a racist society. I suggest you read up on some of this before thinking it's a thing of the past.
Reasearch comparing HBCUs to HWCUs (Historically White Colleges and Universities)allows us to continue to investigate how racism is still operating in our society.

Posted by Jack on September 2, 2008 at 9:25pm EDT
No chance of self-selection going on, huh?

In def. of Pr. Challenger
Posted by DFS on September 2, 2008 at 9:25pm EDT
Oh come on, RC! What becomes 'racialized" but by a personal choice? Remember the word, "personal." I took two degrees from NCA&TSU and I am here to tell you that this society is not racist, that there is no longer such a thing as a racist society per se in the West since NAZI Germany, or perhaps in some Oriental societies where foreigners are called "non-persons" in their own vocabularies.
One can only regard us as "racialized" only by personal choice. We should not be keeping a statistical count on "black PhD's" or PhD's of any particular stripe. MLK Jr was right regarding content of character over color of skin.
For that matter, I regard organizations such as NABJ, the congressional Black Caucus, and NAACP also as de facto racist.
Get over it. We are all the same, or we are not. You decide.

Denial and Resistance
Posted by RC , grad student on September 3, 2008 at 5:15am EDT
DFS, that's a bunch of colorblind rhetoric, aka denial. I recommend some reading, Bonilla-Silva's Racism without Racists. You may learn something.

Important Data
Posted by Donald Grant , Dr on September 3, 2008 at 5:15am EDT
It is very important that we still collect this data (to the individual alledging racism is dead)...You are obviously not a man of color. When I walk into a room with my white counterpart (both with comparable doctoral degrees), I am discounted until I prove other wise while they often gain automatic reverence!!
My Black College experience definitely impacted my ability to seek, sustain and complete my doctoral studies. If the drop out rates for Black children in some HS is over 50%, we could use models from these HBCU's in middle schools to promote full matriculation thru high school. HBCU's are and have been doing something right for years...we should pay closer attn...or is it by design that we dont choose the best practices to promote Black excellence (it wouldnt be the first time)??!!

Research
Posted by james , ceo on September 3, 2008 at 5:30am EDT
Reearch on the topic is needed in a world where funding and accountability are linked. Further research is needed on how these talented people can become mentors to others. Their stories are important.
As a product of a HBCU and a distinguished sucess, I submit we live in a racisits environment and it does impact some more than others. Not to recognize this fact is to deny the everyday experience of non-Ph.Ds who struggle everyday for their place, rights and dignity.
Expand the study and pose more questions to guide our effort toward making education a reality for the many and not just the few.
James

Why more Ph.D. students at HBCU's
Posted by Margaret G. Lee , Dr. on September 6, 2008 at 7:45am EDT
I think that black students who did not have the so-called "black experience" by attending an HBCU as undergraduates (and perhaps they had a bad experience at a white institution), enroll in graduate programs at HBCU's to experience studying in an all-black environment where they hope to have a more positive and nurturing experience. That was the case with my son.

There seems to be Confusion over the findings???
Posted by bustapha on February 24, 2009 at 3:30pm EST
First, it is not all PhDs, only those in Science and Engineering. Second, the type of instituion that produces the most PhDs in in Science and Engineering, are Elite private Liberal Arts Colleges (Oberlin 50; non HBCUs), for every 1000 undergraduate degrees awarded to African Americans, about 37 go on to receive PhDs in S&E fields. Next are Private (Non HBCUs) Research institutions at 36 per 1000 undergraduate degrees awarded to African Americans. Next on the list are Private Liberal Arts HBCUs, for every 1000 undergraduate degrees awarded to African Americans, just under 15 go on to receive PhDs in S&E. Then in descending order: Public Research (non HBCU) Universities 13/1000; private liberal Arts (non-HBCU) 11/1000; Public HBCUs 7/1000; Public Liberal Arts (non-HBCU) 2/1000.
Still, only 21% of African Americans attend HBCUs, but these schools produce about 29% of the African Americans with PhDs in S&E.

Student to Faculty Ratio
Posted by ProfK , Assoc. Prof. at LVC on July 22, 2009 at 10:15pm EDT
An earlier poster noted the engagement and class size at HBCUs. I think this is an excellent point. If you correlate the size of the undergrad school for PhD grads would you find that small, liberal arts, or teaching schools (incl. HBCUs) are disproportionately represented? Very few students, even smart ones, enter college with the goal of getting a PhD. This is something that is nutured by genuine faculty who love to teach and serve as mentors. I suspect this happens with professors at HBCUs and it also happens (sorry R1s) a lot at teaching schools and liberal arts schools. John Ciardi said that a university is what a college becomes when it loses interest in students. This is partially true. PhDs who teach, small course sizes, advising and accessibility, and undergrad research all play a role in students deciding to go to grad school. If HBCUs are doing this better than R1s (which they are), then we should reward them for it.

Racism No Longer Exist? Are you Serious?
Posted by Educated on September 19, 2009 at 3:15pm EDT
- Posted by DFS on September 2, 2008 at 9:25pm EDT
- Oh come on, RC! What becomes 'racialized" but by a personal choice? Remember the word, "personal." I took two degrees from NCA&TSU and I am here to tell you that this society is not racist,
- When I read the above I had to wonder whether this person is For Real?....White people even admit to blatant practice and existence of racism in the American Society. Not because there are no longer signs that say Blacks are not allowed means that there is no more racism. There are so many types of racism: Spatial, institutional, internalized and individual and they are practiced daily no matter how subtle Please educate yourself about the different types of racism so you can recognize it when you experience or see it in action:
- http://www.archchicago.org/departments/racial_justice/workshop/Phase%20I%20Presentation/sld014.htm
- ..Brainwashing has really working on the person who wrote the above...They are in for a RUDE AWAKENING.....

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