Atlanta

Education

Atlanta's public school system enrolled 60,064 students in a total of 99 schools in the fall of 1996 and employed 3,605 classroom teachers, with a student/teacher ratio of 16.7 to one. During the 1995–96 school year, 2,054 students graduated from high schools in the city. In the 1994–95 school year, revenues from state, local, and federal sources totaled $499,845,000, and expenditures totaled $416,105, or $6,986 per pupil.

In the 1990s public education in Atlanta received a boost with the inauguration of the Georgia Lottery for Education. Among the activities it has helped fund are a prekindergarten program, the HOPE scholarship program, and new educational technology, as well as centers to train school personnel in using it. Atlanta's public school system has been widely praised for its Magnet School Program, which offers concentrated courses of study to students interested in particular career areas, including communications, performing arts, information processing, and the hospitality industry.

Located in downtown Atlanta, Georgia State University is the state's second-largest institution of higher learning. The university enrolls more than 20,000 students, who take courses offered by 50 academic departments. Emory University is a noted private university situated on a 255-hectare (631-acre) campus in Atlanta. It underwent major physical improvement and expansion in the 1990s thanks to a $105 million gift from the Emily and Ernest Woodruff Fund. A unique academic presence in Atlanta is Atlanta University Center, a consortium of six traditionally black colleges in the area. The six colleges, which share some facilities, but remain independent entities, are Clark Atlanta University, Inter-denominational Theological Center, Morehouse College, Morehouse School of Medicine, Morris Brown College, and Spelman College.

Other colleges and universities in the Atlanta area include the Atlanta College of Art, Atlanta Metropolitan College, DeKalb College, the DeVry Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Oglethorpe University.