When we break down the statistics on bachelor's degrees, we see that there is very little difference in the fields of study chosen by black and white college students.
For blacks, business management was by a large margin the most popular major. Blacks earned 33,404 bachelor's degrees in the field of business management and administration in the 2003-04 academic year. This was 25.5 percent of all bachelor's degrees earned by blacks. African-American college students, in common with whites, are heavily career oriented and they tend to shape their course studies accordingly. They want to learn skills that will help them get a good job after graduation so that they can pay off their student loans and ensure that they will have a good shot at achieving higher income status than their parents, most of whom entered their wage-earning years in Jim Crow society.
Most white college students have the same goals. As a result, business management was also the most popular field of study among whites. More than 20 percent of all white bachelor's degrees were earned in the field of business. For both blacks and whites, the percentage of all college students who major in business has increased in recent years.
The next most popular field of study for blacks who earned bachelor's degrees was the social sciences. This includes sociology, economics, and political science. Education was the second most popular major among whites. The fields of psychology, communications, and health sciences were popular majors among both racial groups. It is noteworthy to point out that computer science was the fifth most popular major among blacks but was not among the 10 most popular majors for whites.
Some graphs:
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