Survey Shows Fewer Black High School Students Believe They’ll Attend College

A new survey of graduating high school students published Monday by YouthTruth revealed a wide gap between Black and Latino male students who want to attend college and those who believe they’ll go.

According to NBC News, the Class of 2023: Who Plans to Go to College? survey by YouthTruth, a national nonprofit, included 25,000 respondents from 223 schools in 21 states. Seventy-three percent of Latino high school seniors surveyed said they wanted to attend college, a 6% drop from 2019, while 64% said they expected to attend college.

Black students had similar results. Seventy-four percent said they wanted to attend college, a 5% drop, while 66% said they expected to go. Nationally, 74% of all U.S. seniors wanted to receive a higher education, and 66% expected to go.

“There’s this durable gap between aspiration and expectations that have not recovered through the pandemic,” the report’s lead author, Jennifer De Forest, told NBC News. “For kids who have fewer options, less capital … they’re the ones who are finding less opportunity.”

According to Fortune, college enrollment has dropped 8% from 2019 through 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic is largely to blame as students were forced to switch to virtual learning, essentially ruining the college experience. Others were forced to drop out entirely as the unemployment rate skyrocketed overnight and students had to enter the workforce in order to help their families.

With college enrollment declining, researchers and educational professionals are increasingly concerned about college pathways, including community college, which has also dropped for male Black and Latino high school students. Additionally, many are turned off by the college process itself.

“The large themes were students, particularly Black and Hispanic … wanting more end-to-end support through the process of understanding how college works, how to choose a college — not just the application process,” De Forest said. “They need the whole system demystified.”

Despite the statistics, applications and enrollment have increased at HBCU schools. That can be attributed to the Black Lives Matter movement and the number of high-ranking Black politicians who attended HBCUs, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Georgia Gubernatorial Candidate Stacey Abrams, and Cedric Richmond. White enrollment at HBCUs is also increasing.