Explaining the Black-White Gap in Bachelor's Degree Completion

What is it about?

Black and white students on average possess different rates of bachelor's degree (BA) completion, with black enrollees into four-year colleges graduating 25 percent of the time as compared with 50 percent of white enrollees. In this paper, we explain why such a substantial gap exists by examining multiple stages of the college-going process. First, we analyze the impact of students' economic and academic resources prior to college entry on the BA gap. Next, we examine the selection, or "matching," process between students and colleges among black and white students who decide to enroll. Finally, we explore black and white students' social and academic experiences while attending college. We find that differences in pre-college economic and social resources prior to college explain much of the black-white BA completion gap. However, we also find that black students on average select into four-year colleges at higher rates than white students, given the initial distribution of resources. This difference in decision-making leads to a higher rate of BA completion among all black high school graduates than would be expected if black students were to select into college in a more similar way to white students. Paradoxically, however, black students' greater willingness to select into four-year colleges also leads to a higher, average dropout rate of this group as compared to white students. This is the process at the core of the "paradox of persistence" that we describe at length within this paper. In addition, once students enter into college, academic performance explains much more of the black-white BA completion gap than does students' social experiences and engagement.

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Why is it important?

This study is important for several key reasons. First, it explains the black-white BA completion gap from a population perspective, or among all black and white high school graduates. While a sizable literature in sociology exists examining racial gaps in college experiences and outcomes, the focus often is on institutional policies and programs – such as affirmative action -- that are designed to offset the deep and consequential legacy of discrimination in the U.S. However, studies focused on affirmative action typically can’t tell us much about the mechanisms driving the BA completion rate at the population level. This omission is especially consequential because the most elite colleges, where discussions of affirmative action unfold, represent only about 20 percent of all colleges in the US and only about 15 percent of black students attend such colleges. So we really need to move our thinking beyond the study of elite colleges in order to understand racial inequality in higher education or social stratification more broadly. Second, this paper models the college selection process very explicitly, using this information both to inform the college-level analysis and, perhaps more importantly, to identify the pattern of “paradoxical persistence” we describe in the paper. Third, the paper uses counterfactual analysis in a creative way, employing it to compare the impacts of paradoxical persistence with processes we as scholars typically have thought more about, such as affirmative action. As another point, our results have important theoretical implications, both for those who have thought about the application of Boudon’s theory of primary and secondary effects to the US context and for those engaged in discussions surrounding Blau and Duncan’s theory of cumulative disadvantage. Our findings suggest that black students’ decisions at the point of selecting into college help to counterbalance their relative disadvantage in pre-college resources, rather than reinforcing it, as Boudon’s theory would predict. This finding suggests that primary and secondary effects should be rethought in the US context, especially when considering the situation of black college attendees. Regarding Blau and Duncan’s findings regarding the independent role of race in producing cumulative disadvantage, black students' decisions to select into college at a higher rate as similarly resourced white students, which we see as the result of individual agency, importantly disrupts this disadvantageous process. The implication here is that black students’ individual drive and agency are important factors when we think about increasing these students’ graduation rates and lessening inequality – and scholars, policy-makers, and college administrators should pay more attention to harnessing individual drive and ambition to produce better outcomes, rather than relying on policy structures, alone.

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