AN ALTERNATIVE RANKING METHODOLOGY OF THE BEST COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES FOR AFRICAN-AMERICANS

For an African-American, choosing the best college or university is important since the choice of college includes the complex decision of whether to attend one of the nation’s 89, 4-year Historically Black Colleges or Universities (HBCU) or a Traditionally White Institution (TWI). Numerous periodicals publish annual rankings of the nation’s best colleges. Black Enterprise magazine (BE) focuses on the best colleges for African-Americans. Recently, BE’s rankings were criticized by the editors of the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE 2005) for stacking the deck in favor of HBCUs by applying a low weight to important factors such as retention and graduation rates. This study uses a variation of the College-Football Success Model (Walker, Keogh, & Civils, 2006), to determine the rankings of the best universities for African Americans. With this model we also answer the question; what type of institution, the HBCU or the TWI, is the best college choice for African-Americans? The results collected on 411 of the most influential African-Americans in the country, indicate that HBCUs with approximately 32 percent of undergraduate degrees conferred nationally produced 156 of the 411 (or 38%) most influential African-Americans in 2005. It was also found that although HBCUs represent only 4 percent of the nation’s approximately 1,800 four year colleges, 52 (or 26%) of the 202 undergraduate schools attended by these individuals were HBCUs. The study also indicates that there is no difference between HBCUs and TWIs in the movement of graduates into top-quality graduate schools.