Of the nation's leading universities, Vanderbilt University has shown the most impressive progress over the past decade in increasing black freshman enrollments. Large increases have also occurred at Johns Hopkins, Columbia, UCLA, Tufts, and MIT.

The largest decline in black first-year enrollments has been at the University of Michigan.

Among the nation's leading liberal arts colleges, almost all showed significant gains over the past decade. Bowdoin College in Maine saw the largest increase. At Middlebury, Smith, Pomona, and Grinnell colleges, first-year enrollments of black students doubled or more.

Readers of our journal often write that they find our statistics depressing because the ...