Fewer working-age African-Americans than whites hold four-year college degrees in all but one of the nation’s 150 largest metropolitan areas, according to a new Next America analysis of data from the massive National Equity Atlas.
Likewise, the share of working-age Hispanic adults holding four-year college degrees lags behind the percentage of whites, often by enormous margins, in all but one of those 150 communities, the analysis found.
In each case, the sole exception was in a community with a very small proportion of minority adults. African-Americans exceed whites in college completion only in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where less than 2 percent of the total population is black. Hispanics exceed whites in college completion only in Pittsburgh, where Hispanics represent just 1.3 percent of the population. In most cities with large African-American and Hispanic populations, adults from those groups trail working-age whites in college completion by at least a double-digit margin.
