Best American Universities for African Americans

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education has published a ranking of 26 competitive American universities according to the numbers and success of African American students and faculty.

The journal has a comment with which I strongly agree, although it does not apply to some international rankings:

Unlike other ranking efforts in the field of higher education, our statistics, without exception, are highly quantitative. This is in sharp contrast to highly impressionistic institutional rankings such as those compiled by U.S. News & World Report in which 25 percent or more of the total ranking score is derived from subjective surveys of university reputations as determined by presidents, provosts, and deans of admissions at other institutions.

Iam not sure about the next one though. I can think of many ways in which universities could game the rankings such as counting biracial and African , including white and coloured South Africans and North African students and faculty as Blacks or African Americans, fiddling about with the overall student and faculty numbers from which the percentages of Blacks are calculated or double counting of staff teaching in two departments.

All JBHE data is obtained from our own in-house surveys of the colleges and universities as well as from government sources. Each year JBHE surveys university and college admissions offices to obtain data on applicants, acceptances, first-year enrollments, and black student yield. On a regular basis we also survey deans of faculty at these universities for statistical information on their numbers and percentages of black faculty and black tenured faculty.

While one may disagree over what measuring factors are most important, the data we collect is broad-based, solid, quantifiable, and not subject to dispute.

Here are the top ten universities ranked according to JBHE:

1. Duke

2. Emory

3. Princeton

4. Washington (St Louis)

5. Vanderbilt

6. North Carolina at Chapel Hill

7. Georgetown

8. Harvard

9. Virginia

10. Brown