{"id":406301,"date":"2026-07-21T07:25:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T07:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/406301\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T07:25:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T07:25:07","slug":"new-data-on-californias-black-serving-institutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/406301\/","title":{"rendered":"New Data on California\u2019s Black-Serving Institutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two years ago, the California Legislature passed a law<\/a> creating a new designation, Black-serving institutions, to recognize colleges and universities working toward Black students\u2019 success. To qualify, institutions have to enroll at least 10\u00a0percent Black students\u2014or a minimum of 1,500 students\u2014and take specific steps to support them, including submitting data on their enrollment, retention and graduation rates and drafting plans to improve their academic outcomes and close equity gaps. The designation doesn\u2019t currently come with any funding, but institutions regard it as a badge of honor. They can renew their status every five years by submitting progress updates; the first batch of 31 BSIs will be up for renewal in 2030.<\/p>\n

Now new data shows how they\u2019re doing so far, as well as how they can better serve Black students\u2014and why state funding would help, college leaders say. Researchers at the University of Southern California recently published a data dashboard<\/a> to track student outcomes, which reveals a mixed bag: some heartening numbers, as well as some shortcomings. <\/p>\n

The new dashboard uses federal data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, or IPEDS, to offer a first glimpse into how these institutions are serving Black students.<\/p>\n

Royel Johnson, associate professor of higher education and social work at USC and principal investigator of the data project, said the goal was to establish a \u201cbaseline\u201d to track if BSIs create real progress for Black students down the line.<\/p>\n

He hopes the dashboard, which shows Black student enrollment and graduation trends and other metrics by college and by type of institution, will be a \u201ctool of accountability and transparency\u201d and \u201ca way of taking stock of where we are now\u201d at the newly designated BSIs. Colleges can also use the peer-benchmarking tool to see how their student success metrics compare to similar institutions. The dashboard will be updated as new IPEDS data comes out.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust being a BSI doesn\u2019t mean that you are succeeding in supporting Black students,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cIt just means that you\u2019ve made a compelling case for what you plan to do over the next five years.\u201d Over time, the dashboard will \u201callow us to see whether or not that commitment translates into material gains in terms of enrollment, retention and completion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Findings<\/p>\n

The good news is that BSIs have the potential to make a difference in the lives of tens of thousands of Black students \u201cif we do it right with these institutions,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

The data show almost 44,000 Black students attend the 31 designated institutions, representing 28\u00a0percent of all Black college students in California. The dashboard also highlights which colleges have made the greatest gains in Black enrollment over the last decade and which are graduating Black students at rates on par with their peers. At Cerritos College, for example, Black enrollment rose 3.6\u00a0percentage points and Black completion rates jumped 13\u00a0percentage points between 2015 and 2023, according to the dashboard. And though Black enrollment fell 5.3\u00a0percentage points at Compton College, Black students\u2019 completion rate skyrocketed 17\u00a0percentage points over the same period.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can see that some institutions have been doing really well, and maybe we want to learn from [them],\u201d Johnson said. He sees the data as an opportunity for further research into how some institutions achieved the wins they did.<\/p>\n

But some data points revealed gloomier outcomes. <\/p>\n

At 18 of the 31 BSIs as of 2023, Black students completed and graduated at 80\u00a0percent the rate of their peers, according to the data. Only six institutions had no completion gaps between Black students and their classmates. For Black-serving community colleges, 22\u00a0percent of Black students finished within three years on average, compared to 31\u00a0percent of other students. At four-year institutions, 59\u00a0percent of Black students completed within six years on average relative to 71\u00a0percent of their peers. Black students\u2019 six-year graduation rates also fell behind those of their peers at all four-year BSIs as of 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven at these BSIs that have been recognized for their commitment, there\u2019s a lot of work to do,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

A Moment of Reflection<\/p>\n

Some of the findings \u201cmay not be glamorous,\u201d Johnson said, but he hopes they cause college leaders to reflect and enact changes.<\/p>\n

If BSI status \u201conly operates as a consumer information tool or as a badge that you get to put on your website\u00a0\u2026 then you know we will have failed,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

He noted that colleges\u2019 applications for BSI status, which are featured on the dashboard, vary widely in terms of their plans for improving Black student success. He said many of them focus on fostering student belonging<\/a>, but some lacked detailed plans for institutional policy changes to support that goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cTalk about belonging. That\u2019s really important,\u201d he said. \u201cBut don\u2019t just tell me how you\u2019re going to create a new student group or club that\u2019s going to bring Black students together and have them interact and find community, because that alone is not enough to move the outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he expects colleges will be \u201cup for the challenge\u201d of reflecting on the data to develop new strategies, he added. By applying to become BSIs, they \u201cmade the commitment to changing\u201d Black student outcomes for the better. So far, he said he\u2019s only gotten positive responses from college leaders eager to peruse and use the new, easy-to-navigate data. <\/p>\n

Michael Marion, interim executive director of the California State University system\u2019s Central Office for the Advancement of Black Student Success, said the dashboard reveals some \u201cbright points\u201d at each of the BSI-designated CSU campuses. He pointed to Sacramento State University as a model, noting the institution introduced the country\u2019s first Black honors college<\/a> two years ago. The dashboard shows Black student completion at Sacramento State rose 12\u00a0percentage points since 2015.<\/p>\n

At the same time, some of the \u201cgrim\u201d data points allow \u201cme and our office and various leaders throughout the CSU to really be able to say, \u2018OK, how can I\u00a0\u2026 shift energies and focus and funding to support certain initiatives that will help correct these numbers?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cWe all have to look ourselves in the mirror\u00a0\u2026 and say, \u2018What can we do better and what are we not doing great at?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Money Matters<\/p>\n

But BSIs need funding to invest, emphasized Keith Curry, president of Compton College.<\/p>\n

With the new data at their disposal, BSIs like his are \u201cmaking adjustments to their plan and looking at\u00a0\u2026 how we align our budget to meet those needs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But state lawmakers have ignored two requests to attach funding to the BSI designation over the past two years, he noted. He hopes that the data dashboard, which shows just how many Black students BSIs serve and how persistent equity gaps remain, \u201cgives us a chance to advocate for money to support BSIs.\u201d<\/p>\n

He believes BSIs could serve as a national model beyond California, particularly for federally designated minority-serving institutions, such as predominantly Black institutions or Hispanic-serving institutions. The government historically based their MSI status on enrollment thresholds, but Curry believes a focus on how well minority students are supported is the next step.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re talking about services, and we\u2019re talking about how you support the students,\u201d Curry said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just enrollment-based.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson agreed that for BSIs to fulfill their potential, \u201cthe most urgent thing\u201d is to fund them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s going to help them serve Black students in a way that\u2019s going to really be transformative,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two years ago, the California Legislature passed a law creating a new designation, Black-serving institutions, to recognize colleges…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,5676,15,584,8527,1286,100],"class_list":["post-406301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-career","tag-education","tag-events","tag-higher","tag-jobs","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}