Having Their Lives Narrowed Down? The State of Black Women’s College Success

Contradictory trends emerge relative to Black women’s college success: They have doubled their enrollment rates in thirty years but their graduation rates remain behind those of White and Asian women. This integrative, interdisciplinary review of both student- and institutional-level factors explores the role of individual characteristics and backgrounds, relationships, and institutional support structures relative to Black women’s success in college. The findings reveal that African American women’s lives may be narrowed down in research that includes them through (a) an emphasis on individual factors in college success instead of institutional (within college campuses) or larger sociostructural issues (race, class, or gender inequities in the larger society), (b) a lack of analysis of within-group difference among Black women, and (c) framing the notion of success as persistence or completion of a student’s degree program instead of self-identified or unique notions of success such as collective uplift, well-being, or satisfaction.