Two public universities in Orange County ranked in the top five in granting undergraduate degrees to minorities in the 2001-2002 school year, according to a national survey.

Cal State Fullerton and UC Irvine ranked fourth and fifth in the nation, respectively, in the number of undergraduate degrees they awarded in 2002 to students of color, according to an annual survey published by Black Issues in Higher Education magazine.

"I'm not surprised," CSUF student Aisha Humphrey, 22, said Thursday, adding that the university tries to create a multicultural environment, including encouraging black students like her to mentor new arrivals. "There are a lot of groups here geared toward my race."

UCLA was tops in the nation last year in granting degrees to minorities, according to the magazine, followed by UC Berkeley, Florida International University and then CSUF. Cal State Long Beach ranked seventh.

The magazine uses U.S. Department of Education data each year to analyze which colleges educate the most students who identify themselves as black, American Indian, Alaskan native, Asian, Pacific Islander or Hispanic.

Nationally, the percentage of degrees awarded to minority students has increased by 48 percent over the last decade, according to the analysis by Victor M. H. Borden, an associate vice chancellor of research at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

Borden reported a "closing but continuing gap in degree conferral rates among minorities compared to their percentages in the general population." He noted that the number of Hispanics receiving degrees nationwide is up, but not growing as fast as their population.

In Orange County, 31 percent of residents identified themselves as Hispanic or Latino in the 2000 Census, with 13.6 percent saying they were Asian.

Asian students continue to predominate at the University of California, with UCLA, UC Berkeley and UCI making up the top three universities in the nation awarding degrees to Asian-Americans, according to the report.

At the University of California, Irvine, 1,896 or 52 percent of its baccalaureate degrees awarded in 2001-02 went to Asian-Americans, while 11 percent, or 394, were earned by Hispanics, the magazine said. UCI did not break the top 100 list for black graduates.

Hispanics made up 21 percent of the graduates at California State University, Fullerton, while 24 percent of graduates there were Asian.

UCI's vice chancellor for outreach, Manuel Gomez, said UCI's diversity demonstrates several factors, including the large Asian-American population of Orange County and its strong record of high-school achievement, and attempts by the campus to attract other students of color, including $1 million in grants each year to help underrepresented minorities learn science and math.

"The fact is that these groups termed 'minority' in Black Issues are in fact not minorities in our K-12 population, particularly in elementary schools," Gomez said. "UCI simply represents the face of the future with regard to diversity." Orange County has the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam, a large Korean community, and a growing Chinese population, particularly in Irvine.

In recent years, UCI stopped taking every UC-qualified applicant and has become increasingly selective about taking only top students.

Last year, Gomez said, one-third of all Asian-American students who graduated from high school in California were eligible to attend the University of California – meaning they had graduated in the top one-eighth of their class and taken all the required courses.

This compared with 13 percent of white students, and Latino and black eligibility rates of less than 4 percent.

"There is a continuing inequality gap in educational achievement," Gomez said. "African-American, Latino and native Americans are less likely to graduate from high school, they are concentrated in poorer-performing high schools, and have lower rates of college-going parents."