According to a new study conducted by the American Council of Education, the number of minorities enrolling in college is growing. The Minorities in Higher Education Annual Status Report, issued last Wednesday, shows that the number of minorities attending college has doubled in the past two decades from 2 million in 1980-81 to 4.3 million in 2000-’01.
Aaron Brower, a professor of social work and Integrated Liberal Studies at the University of Wisconsin, specializes in success and transition in higher education. He said the growth in minority enrollment numbers is consistent with other college trends that have surfaced during the past ten years.
“Now, about 300 million students go on to some form of higher education — up from 250 million about 10 years ago,” Brower said.
He added that the higher numbers could also be attributed to the fact that more and more people, both minorities and non-minorities, are graduating from high school.
UW professor emeritus of economics W. Lee Hansen added that efforts of institutions to enroll more minorities through affirmative action and preferential enrollment, the growing population of minorities in the middle class, and the economic benefits of a college degree are other reasons for the increase.
However, the American Council of Education’s report stated that whites are still more likely to enroll in college than minorities. While 46 percent of whites attend college, only 40 percent of African Americans and 34 percent of Hispanics enroll.
These differences are credited to a lack of early educational opportunities and options in low-income neighborhoods where many minorities reside.
Hansen noted that this scenario is evident in Wisconsin.
“It is the depressing reality that so many minority students in grades K-12, particularly African-American students, perform so poorly academically, as indicated by the state of Wisconsin’s annual testing program in the 4th, 8th and 10th grades,” Hansen said. “The percentage of African-American students who perform at levels that [would] enable them to succeed academically is terribly low in reading, math, science, social studies, and the like.”
UW assistant professor of educational administration Jerlando Jackson agreed with this notion. He feels that the quality of the curriculum and the schools which many minorities attend need to improve in order for minority students to not only enroll in higher education, but to remain there and complete a degree.
Jackson is somewhat skeptical of the optimism many have for the new report, stating that it is not telling the big story.
“There is a drastic decline between those who enroll in the universities and those who stay enrolled,” Jackson said. “The real challenges the students face happen once they are at the university.”
Brower, while satisfied with the increase in enrollment of minority students, is also quick to point out that differences still exist.
“While the numbers of students of all backgrounds who go to college is going up,” he said, “the patterns of who’s ‘making it’ in college still mirror national inequities of race and social class.”
