Completing the Educational Career: High School Graduation, Four-year College Enrollment, and Bachelor’s Degree Completion among Black, Hispanic, and White Students

Abstract

Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study, the author investigates racial disparities in high school graduation, four-year college enrollment, and bachelor’s degree completion. In addition, the author considers how conditionally relevant college and early adult variables shape bachelor’s degree completion. The results indicate that although comparable numbers of black and Hispanic students obtain bachelor’s degrees, their educational career trajectories differ substantially. Compared with white students, black students are more likely to end their educational careers after starting college without completing a bachelor’s degree, whereas Hispanic students are more likely to end their educational careers without entering a four-year college. Moreover, early adult and college-specific variables have a substantial impact on bachelor’s degree completion and explain black-white disparities in bachelor’s degree attainment. This research shows the continuing significance of race in shaping the educational outcomes of young adults at all stages of their educational careers.

Structural racism as the fundamental cause of the academic achievement gap

“…Given that race is a potent predictor of SES in American society and minority students hail from families that are disadvantaged on essentially all indicators of SES (e.g., income, educational attainment, wealth, and occupational prestige), the centrality of socioeconomic disadvantage to educational disparities is difficult to overstate. For example, in terms of educational attainment, numerous studies over the past 20 years have demonstrated that after holding constant family background and academic factors (including achievement), Black students are more likely to enter college than their White counterparts (Bennett & Xie, 2003;Bennett & Lutz, 2009;Blake, 2018;Merolla, 2013;Merolla, 2018;Merolla & Jackson, 2014;Mangino, 2010;Mangino, 2019). This pattern, sometimes referred to as the net Black advantage further underscores the fundamental role of structural racism in shaping the educational trajectories of US students.…”

“…For example, Merolla (2018) argues that the net Black advantage pattern can be interpreted as a "societal counterfactual"-an outcome that would occur if socioeconomic and academic factors were equally distributed across racial groups. Of course, due to the racialized social system in the United States, socioeconomic status is not distributed equally by any measure and Black students do not attend college at higher rates than White students.…”

The Paradox of Persistence: Explaining the Black-White Gap in Bachelor’s Degree Completion

“…Some studies do make the connection between college entry and college completion (Alon 2015;Bound, Lovenheim, and Turner 2010;Light and Strayer 2000;Merolla 2017;Venti and Wise 1983), but none of these studies estimates the sources of the BA completion gap using detailed measures of pre-college and college-level experiences, including information from student transcripts. This issue is important because transcript data are required to establish with confidence the role that academic performance plays in generating the completion gap.…”

“…We arrive at this result using more comprehensive measures of pre-college academic and social experiences than existing studies have used (e.g., Bennett and Lutz 2009; Bennett and Xie 2003; Merolla 2017; Merolla and Jackson 2014). In addition, most research on educational inequality by race compares black and white students, but Hispanic students also occupy an important minority status.…”

Negotiating new racism: ‘It’s not racist or sexist. It’s just the way it is’

“…Today, new racisms are continued expressions of White racial framing which challenge the idea of a 'post-civil' rights, 'post-racial' US society (Bonilla-Silva, 2017). Although overt and legal discrimination may be less prevalent today than in the past, there remain stark inequalities in nearly every indicator of quality of life between White Americans and people of color (Brewster et al, 2015;Merolla, 2017). Simply put, Black Americans do not receive equal opportunities to succeed in society; they are more likely to pay more for housing, live in poorer conditions, and are less likely to own or live in areas with access to public transportation or employment opportunities (Bonilla-Silva, 2017;Hanson and Hawley, 2014;Patillo, 2003;Sampson and Sharkey, 2008).…”