Kennesaw State University announced in a news release today that it was ranked 17th nationally in bachelor’s degrees conferred to African-American students, making the top 100 list again of colleges and universities in the U.S. that confer the greatest number of bachelor’s degrees to minority students.  The annual list, compiled by  Diverse: Issues in Higher Education was published in that magazine’s Aug. 23 edition.

Georgia State University, at number 3, had the best record of bachelor’s degree conferral to black students among Georgia colleges and universities. Georgia Southern University also made the list at number 20.

Last year KSU was ranked number 24.

In combined total ranking of minority degree conferral, which includes African-American, Asian-American, Hispanic, and Native-American students, KSU was in the 80th position.

In a news release written by Tiffany Capuano, Kennesaw State University’s President Pamela Whitten said, “We deeply value the diversity of our students, and this national ranking reveals our continued commitment to create and promote an inclusive and supportive environment where all students can be successful”

According to the news release, “The University conferred 1,677 undergraduate degrees to minority students in 2016-17, which represents about 35 percent of all graduates at Kennesaw State that year. The annual ranking examines the ability of 2,746 U.S. colleges and universities to award degrees to African-American, Asian-American, Hispanic and Native American students. According to Diverse, the Top 100 report is the only national analysis using the most recent enrollment data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.”

In the Fall semester of 2017, minority students accounted for more than a third of KSU’s student population of 35,846. African-American students were about 21 percent (7,643) of the overall number, Hispanic students 9 percent (3,307) and Asian-American students a bit over 4 percent (1,726).

The top of the list for graduation of African-American students with bachelor’s degrees for last year was the University of Arizona-Phoenix.  The top for overall minority bachelor’s degree conferral was Florida International University.