Cal State Long Beach ranked ninth in the nation last week for awarding baccalaureate degrees to minority students.
In the year of 2010-11, minorities earned 54 percent of all bachelor’s degrees awarded at CSULB, according to this year’s listing of the “Top 100 Degree Producers” by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education magazine.
Last year, CSULB was ranked 10th in the nation.
“We are over the national average, and we are at our all-time high [graduation] rate for every ethnicity and every group,” CSULB President F. King Alexander said. “Our commitment to maintaining that is being indicated in this ranking.”
Diverse: Issues in Higher Education ranked CSULB as first in awarding undergraduate degrees to minority students in three different major areas – family and consumer sciences, English language and literature and the visual and performing arts.
CSULB was also placed in the top 10 for six other individual disciplines.
Senior communications major Juan Carlos Pereyra said the diversity found on and off campus made CSULB a better place to study.
“Long Beach is and always has been my home,” Pereyra said. “Here, what is being referred to as the ‘minority’ is probably the majority, and I think that that makes this city a far better place.”
Alexander said no ethnic boundaries exist between students at CSULB.
“What you see is a student population that looks like the United Nations,” he said. “I tell people off-campus, ‘If you want to have hope for the future just walk onto our campus. They function the way you hope society would function. It’s wonderfully accepting.'”
By actively targeting low-income groups, CSULB helps to ensure that underrepresented students get an opportunity for higher education, Alexander said.
Through the Long Beach College Promise, CSULB automatically admits any eligible Long Beach Unified School District graduates to the university. Over the past few years, the Long Beach Unified School District has sent 66 percent of its students to college, and today it’s almost 74 percent, according to Alexander.
CSULB also offers an early start program to assist students coming from overcrowded high schools.
“It’s not just one thing we do; it’s a very comprehensive approach,” Alexander said. “It’s a target on low-income, and we believe this is the most effective way. In targeting low-income students, we believe we are helping all students.”