Diverse city: community colleges are the most diverse institutions in academia, and getting more so by the day - Special report: focus on diversity

Black Issues in Higher Education, Sept 25, 2003 by Garry Boulard

Of all the many numbers that illustrate community colleges' rich diversity, the most telling are these: In 2000, the latest year for which comparable U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Census statistics are available, 12 percent of the U.S. population was Black. In that same year, 12 percent of all two-year college students were Black.

Hispanics and Latinos accounted for 13 percent of the nation's population that year, and 13 percent of the two-year college population.

Asians represented 4 percent of Americans and 6 percent of two-year college students.

In plainer terms, community colleges--more than any other segment in higher education--look like America; the rich ethnic and racial diversity that is America is in plain view on a two-year campus near you.

"It's an incredible achievement--something every community college in the country should feel good about," says Dr. George Boggs, president of the American Association of Community Colleges. "We have all worked very hard to ensure that our campuses are more diverse, that anyone, no matter what neighborhood or country they come from, will find the doors to their nearest community college wide open .... It is still very gratifying to see progress, to know that today our community-college campuses are the most diverse in the nation."

According to the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics, ethnic minorities comprised 33 percent of the nation's community-college student body in 2000, compared to 25 percent of the student population at public four year-institutions and 28 percent at all institutions.

Community-college educators and those who have for years argued in favor of diversity say such statistics speak volumes.

"Four-year schools have approached this question from an entirely different perspective," remarked Dr. John E. Roueche, director of the Community College Leadership Program at the University of Texas at Austin. "Very often they base their reputations on how many students they are able to turn away. The thinking goes that if you turn away a lot of students, you must be a better college than those who take more students. Community colleges have maintained the exact opposite view, and you can see the results in the numbers."

A LENGTHENING LEAD

Consider this: during the 1990s, community colleges not only outpaced four-year institutions in the scope and breadth of their diversity, but they consistently widened the gap in the percentage of ethnic minorities registered oil their campuses compared with their four-year counterparts.

Only 3 percentage points spanned the difference between the number of minority students registered at community colleges and four-yew institutions in 1992. But that gap widened throughout the decade, from 4 percent in 1993 to 5 percent in 1995, and to 8 percent by 2001.

If present trends continue, predicts Rick Chavolla, associate director of minorities and higher education at the American Council on Education (ACE), the diversity gap between community colleges and four-year institutions could reach double digits in the next three to five years.

"It is important to remember that there are more minority students at four-year schools than ever before," Chavolla explains. "But the real numbers and percentage of their overall student population simply haven't gone up as fast or as dramatically as we have seen with the community colleges."

And, Chavolla said, the growth at the community-college level shows no sign of tapering off.

Even more remarkable, considering the far larger overall student population at four-year institutions, is that the actual number of community-college minority students was 87,000 greater in 2001 than at all other higher-education institutions--even though those institutions maintained a 2.5 million student advantage for all students combined.

SURVEY SAYS ...

On the heels of an extensive state-by-state survey of national postsecondary trends based on Census 2000, researchers at the Education Commission of the States (ECS) found that two-year colleges' emphasis on general and remedial education largely explained not only the ongoing increase in the overall number of students attending community colleges, but the explosion in minority-student registration as well.

"These are very often the very sort of classes that minority populations require the most," noted Genevieve Hale, an ECS researcher. "That, plus the fact that community colleges have maintained open-door policies and managed at the same time to keep tuitions low, also account for the growing minority presence."

Ironically, diversity's progress at the community-college level has surfaced at the same time that the nation's public school system has become more racially segregated.

According to a report released by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University earlier this year, the average White enrollment in majority-Hispanic districts was 28 percent in 2001, down from 34 percent in 1987; in predominantly Black schools, the White student enrollment dropped from 37 percent to 31 percent during that same 14-year period.