Black students severely underrepresented among Florida State University System bachelor’s degree grads.

Black students are severely underrepresented among bachelor’s degree graduates from Florida’s State University System. While 21.6% of the students in the state’s public K-12 system are Black, only 12.2% of the system’s bachelor’s degree grads in 2018-19 were Black, according to the IPEDS system at the National Center for Education Statistics.

Among individual institutions, New College of Florida (NCF) and Florida Polytechnic University (FPU) had the lowest percentage of Blacks among bachelor’s degree graduates at 2.3% and 3.3%, respectively. However, several other campuses had percentages below 10%, including the University of South Florida’s Sarasota campus (USF-Sarasota) at 4.5%, the University of Florida (UF) at 5.9%, the University of South Florida’s St. Petersburg campus (USF-St. Pete) at 7.1%, Florida State University (FSU) at 7.3%, Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) at 7.7% and the University of North Florida (UNF) at 9.1%. Florida A&M University (FAMU), an historically Black university, had the highest representation of Black students among bachelor’s degree graduates at 90.1%.

Hispanic students were underrepresented among SUS bachelor’s degree grads as well. Of these graduates, 28.1% systemwide were Hispanic, while 34.5% of public K-12 students are Hispanic. Hispanics accounted for fewer than 15% of graduates at four SUS campus – University of North Florida (11.0%), New College (9.9%), University of West Florida (9.0%) and Florida A&M (1.8%).

Women were underrepresented among bachelor’s degree graduates at only one SUS institution – Florida Polytech (16.7%). That institution focuses on disciplines in which women are underrepresented like engineering and computer science. However, even given that the 16.7% number is still remarkably small.

Of FAMU’s bachelor’s degree graduates in 2018-19, 90.1% were Black. The scale is truncated so that percentages for other institutions can be seen clearly.