AAMU Ranks 10th in producing African American engineers

(AAMU Release) Huntsville, Ala. ---- Diverse Issues in Higher Education has published its annual “Top 100 Degree Producers” list for 2008 (June 12 edition), and Alabama A&M University appears on the list several times.

The magazine records those institutions most successful in the matriculation of African American students at the baccalaureate level from a pool of more than 2,200 institutions, including several proprietary (for-profit) schools.
AAMU ranked 46th, or in the top two percent, of institutions nationwide in the awarding of bachelor’s degrees to African American students by graduating 506 students in the 2006-07 academic year. The top three spots were dominated by three much larger historically black colleges (HBCUs)—Florida A&M, North Carolina A&T and Howard—that recorded more than 1,100 African American graduates each. Hampton University, with 849 graduates, held the banner for private HBCUs.

In the awarding of biological and biomedical sciences degrees to African American students, AAMU ranked 13th nationally with its 48 students. However, small, private Xavier topped the list with 126 graduates during the 2006-07 year, significantly outperforming the mammoth Howard, which reported 90 students. Even cross-town sister institution, Oakwood University, which reported 44 biological-biomedical graduates, achieved a ranking of 18th.

Although Alabama A&M University ranks 34th in the production of African American computer science graduates (22 graduates in 2006-07), that number was 33 percent less than the previous year’s number. Sister HBCU Alabama State University achieved a ranking of 8th place in the nation (61 graduates) in this category. However, had it not been for the listing (first through seventh place) of proprietary schools, Alabama State would have the distinction as the nation’s top producer of black computer science graduates.

AAMU is 15th in the nation in the production of African American graduates who received degrees in the field of education. It awarded 55 such degrees for the reporting period, which was a drop of 40 percent from the 2005-06 academic year. However, such losses in the number of education graduates were common throughout the list’s Top 50, including a 44 percent drop reported by Florida Memorial and a 31 percent drop recorded by Temple.

Perhaps the jewel in the magazine’s reporting on the baccalaureate degrees received by African American students for the previous academic year was AAMU’s 10th place national ranking for the production of African American engineers, edging Tuskegee out of the Top 10.

AAMU alumnus William E. Cox is president of Cox, Matthews and Associates, the publisher of the bi-weekly magazine, which has become one of the most respected publications in the higher education community. A similar listing for graduate schools will be published in the upcoming weeks. For more information, visit www.diverseeducation.com.