Cultural diversity

Demography

Ethnic group

Variety (cybernetics)

Diversity (politics)

Public relations

Gender studies

Access to Higher Education

Economics

Computer science

Workforce

Political science

Population

Sociology

Artificial intelligence

Economic growth

Race (biology)

Higher education

The racial and ethnic makeup of the United States has changed substantially since the country’s founding, with dramatic changes occurring in just the last 20 years. It is well known that the over 50 percent of students from communities of color in public K–12 schools will, in the very near future, be the majority of the U.S. adult population. Racial and ethnic diversity comes with a host of benefits at all levels of education and in the workforce—greater productivity, innovation, and culturalcompetency, to name a few. Moreover, the current and future health of our nation—economic and otherwise—requires that the whole of our population have equitable access to sources of opportunity.Chief among such sources of opportunity is higher education. It is therefore imperative that educators, policymakers, community leaders, members of the media, and others have access to timely data on one of the most salient predictors of highereducation access and success in this country: race and ethnicity. To be clear, there are myriad factors that inform educational access and success, such as income, wealth, geography, and age. Yet it remains the case—as the data in this and other studies show—that race is a prevailing factor in many educational outcomes.This report examines over 200 indicators, looking at who gains access to a variety of educational environments and experiences, and how these trajectories and their outcomes differ by race and ethnicity. These data provide a foundation from which the higher education community and its many stakeholders can draw insights, raise new questions, and make the case for why race still matters in American higher education. When considering the data on the whole, we offer the following key takeaways: 1. Over the past two decades, the U.S. population has grown not only more educated but also more racially and ethnically diverse, thanks in large part to a growing Hispanic population that is seeking higher education at levels not before seen. 2. Too many Black students fare poorly in America’s postsecondary education system. At both the undergraduate and graduate levels, advances in Black students’ enrollment and attainment have been accompanied by some of the lowest persistence rates, highest undergraduate dropout rates, highest borrowing rates, and largest debt burdens of any group. 3. We still lack precise, national data on many educational outcomes for American Indians or Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians or other Pacific Islanders; but what the available data do show is troubling. 4. Great differences exist by race, ethnicity, and gender in where students go to college and what they study, signaling an uneven playing field in the labor market and a threat to the opportunity for intergenerational upward mobility. 5. How students pay for higher education varied considerably by race and ethnicity, especially in terms of who borrows and who leaves college with high levels of student loan debt.6. Racial and ethnic diversity among college faculty, staff, and administrators still doesn’t reflect that of today’s college students.

Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education: A Status Report