During the 1970s, college admissions personnel focused on the recruitment of minority students in order to fulfill societal obligations. Today, the object at many institutions is simply to recruit as many students as possible in order to insure economic survival.
As the effects of the baby boom gradually began to dissipate during the 1980s, college enrollments nationwide experienced a corresponding downward trend of significant proportions. Unfortunately, this also coincided with the Reagan era's vicious attack on domestic spending by the government. As most of us know, one of the first casualties of this attack was student financial aid. And even though the Administration finally recommended an increase in funding for student financial aid programs in 1989, this request was $2 billion below the 1980 mark when adjusted for inflation.
These realities, combined with the fact that tuition costs at America's colleges and universities have risen at nearly double the rate of both family income and inflation, help to explain the increased emphasis on recruitment that is evident at many colleges and universities today.
In order to understand where minorities fit into the college admissions process, it is essential that the role be considered within an historical context. In 1954, 87 years after the adoption of the 14th Amendment, the United States was still a segregated nation. Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education, by mandating school desegregation, signaled the beginning of the modern era with respect to civil rights.
But it was not until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, however, that it actually became illegal for states or other entities to receive federal funds if they continued to engage in practices which helped to sustain segregation or other forms of discrimination. In 1972, the Adams decision declared that "segregated" colleges and universities had an obligation to develop and implement plans to recruit black students, faculty and staff at an accelerated pace.
By the mid-1970s, the United States was setting an example for the rest of the world in its resolve to rectify its societal inconsistencies with respect to race, ethnic origin, and gender. The 1978 Bakke decision replaced "quota" with "diversity" as admissions personnel engaged in minority recruitment efforts. Affirmative action was the watchword and the principles which it espoused influenced everything higher education did.
Consider the evidence. In 1965 there were some 600,000 blacks enrolled in our colleges and universities; 85 percent of whom were matriculated in historically black colleges (HBC). Fifteen years later, in 1980, there were over one million blacks enrolled with over 80 percent attending predominantly white institutions. But even at its peak (1980), enrollment of minorities never equalled corresponding ratios within the total population.
Sadly, the progress made during the 1960s and 70s did not continue into the 1980s. Despite an overall increase both in high school graduation rates and performance on standardized college entrance tests, black enrollment declined by 16 percent between 1979 and 1986; Hispanic enrollment fell by 16 percent during the same period. Percentagewise, enrollment of blacks and Hispanics is now well below where it was in 1980.
The American Council on Education recently found that eight out of ten colleges and universities are engaged in some type of proactive campaign aimed at boosting minority enrollment. At the same time, however, only 40% of these institutions feel that their efforts have been at least moderately successful in attracting black students; only 30% rate their efforts to recruit Hispanic students as being in the same category.
Obviously, one of the major reasons for the dramatic drop in minority enrollments has been the previously cited reduction in funding available for student financial aid purposes. There has also been a general shift from grants to loans as the predominant means of financial assistance. But with college costs escalating exponentially, many families are simply unable to assume the debt which is increasingly associated with obtaining a college education. This is especially true for minorities, as 85 percent of all black students currently receive some form of financial aid. It is relatively self-evident that any policy aimed at reducing financial assistance tends to disproportionately affect minority students.
A second reason for the decline is the failure of public schools to adequately prepare minority students for the colossal challenges of collegiate life. The fact that many states continue to tighten standards for admission to their public universities only serves to exacerbate the problem for many minorities.
It is important to recognize that the decline in minority enrollments has implications for retention as well as recruitment. It does not end once the matriculation process begins. Many minority students feel isolated once they actually arrive on campus. The recent resurgence in incidents of a racial nature on many of our campuses has not served to heighten the desire of many minority students to enroll in college initially, or to stay there once the semester gets underway.
So what are we doing about the situation? Affirmative action, the shibboleth of the 1970s, has not disappeared. It is, however, no longer in the forefront of current administrative thought at many institutions. Growing financial problems have had a marked impact on the ebullience of our colleges and universities to fulfill their commitments to expand minority enrollments.
Although blacks are scoring slightly higher on the college entrance examinations than has been the case in recent years, as a group they continue to score well below their white counterparts. Mean scores for blacks continue to run approximately one standard deviation behind mean scores for whites. Therefore, black students who score in the upper percentile on entrance examinations constitute a very small portion of the freshman population.
In 1983, for example, 155,080 high school seniors scored above 600 on the math portion of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). Of this number, 1736, or 1.1 percent, were black. And the situation has not improved significantly over the last eight years. Despite minor fluctuations, the percentage of blacks scoring above 600 on the SAT remains virtually unchanged.
Given the current situation with respect to the lack of qualified college bound students in general, the top 100 schools will easily absorb the vast majority of these super- qualified black applicants. When the smoke clears, it is a relatively safe bet that very few of these students will end up enrolled in the classrooms and programs of America's 3000 other less prestigious colleges and universities.
The scramble among the top 100 institutions to admit these high scoring black students tends to overshadow and dwarf the recruiting efforts of most schools.
Take the case of Kayode Owens, a black student who graduated from a New Jersey high school in 1988. After scoring 1320 on the SAT, Owens received hundreds of phone calls from colleges such as Cornell, Swarthmore, Yale, Brown, and Harvard. Bowdoin even went so far as to fly him to Brunswick, Maine, gratis, for a two-day 'love feast' for minority prospects, complete with a dance at the Afro- American house and a coq au vin dinner at a professor's home. The event, which involved 34 minority students altogether, cost Bowdoin a total of $19,000. And this is by no means an isolated occurrence. Many institutions that are in a financial position to engage in such recruitment efforts are going at it full-force.
So what becomes of the remainder of black and other minority students who score below the cut off line for many of our major colleges and universities? Some will enroll in one of the less prestigious four-year schools on academic or other types of scholarships. Others will manage to pay their own way. Many will choose to attend a community college, which currently handle 43 percent of total black enrollments and 54 percent of total Hispanic enrollments. Of these minority students, only 20 percent will transfer to four year institutions, and of those, only 5 percent will eventually earn a degree.
The skimming process, whereby the top 100 schools absorb the "best" minority candidates, leaves other schools, such as our large, state-supported institutions, with very little recourse than to cull extensively from the total population of high school seniors. Unfortunately, this process tends to skew their rolls with minority students who would not have been admitted had they not been minorities.
What students and professors in the majority of American college classrooms see in their daily experience are an extensive number of minority students who are academically below the average for non-minorities. The net result is that white students then have a tendency to see all minority students as being less able than they are, which is precisely the same stereotypic thinking that was evident 25 years ago. When taken in concert with other detrimental trends, it is no wonder then that we are experiencing a resurgence of racial tension across some of American's college campuses.
There are no easy answers to the predicament in which we currently find ourselves. Much more attention needs to be focused on these issues and problems than is presently the case. Letting minorities in the front door so they can later drop out the back is not good for the institution, the student, or society. If the graduation rate for blacks, for example, remains constant, more will fail to get a diploma in the next three years than earned degrees in the entire 1980s.
Despite assurances to the contrary, it is readily apparent that no education leadership exists at the national level at the present time. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the individual states to exercise that leadership. But this is easier said than done. In addition to raising the requirements for high school graduation, states must also be willing to increase the resources and programs necessary to insure that all of our schools can provide the kind of education that is a prerequisite for success in the postsecondary academic arena.
Furthermore, states working in consonance with their publically-supported colleges and universities must develop and enforce programs whereby high school counselors and college admissions personnel work out mutually conceived strategies for dealing with these issues. The interests of the student must be paramount, regardless of the financial constraints imposed on educators.
What we do not need is a new collection of marketing techniques and super fitness centers. The time is past for slick packaging and quick fixes. Colleges and universities, working closely with high schools, must commit themselves to helping students make the right personal choices that will start them on an educational journey that will extend beyond their college years.
As originally published in
ACPA Developments
January 1991
(American College Personnel Association)
Comments or questions about this section of Western Online should be directed to Aaron.Hughey@WKU.EDU
Western Kentucky University
