Picture this in your mind.  World class athletes line up for a 100-yard dash.  All of them are white except one who is Black.  When the gun sounds the white athletes bolt from their starting blocks and run as fast as they can.  The black runner, however, is held back until the other runners have gone 50 yards.  Then he is allowed to run and told “you’re equal now”.  When he asks about the 50-yard head start everyone else got, he’s told to make that up “on your own”.  That’s where we are in America since affirmative action programs have be eliminated in colleges and universities.  Although past racial injustices have not been addressed, blacks and other persons of color have been told to make up the huge gaps that remain “on their own”.  In a recent article from the New York times, Vivian Yee discusses what this “on your own” attitude can produce.  Its’s call the “ideal system” where every student will be evaluated with the same standards based on “merit” alone.  The level of preparation and/or ability resulting from minority students’ k-12 educations will not be considered in any way nor will there be any specific efforts to diversify enrollment.  This may be a reason why  the number of and percentage of minority students in higher education reached a plateau or began to decline in 2011.

Some schools, like Columbia however, have very intentionally worked hard at diversity and have increase minority enrollment and graduation in recent years.  Harvard, in fact, has the most diverse class in 380 years for this fall .  It has been shown that diversity improves educational outcomes at all levels.  I suggest that all parents and students making a college choice look more closely at diversity as a factor and let decision makers in higher education know diversity is important to you by choosing colleges that think it’s important too.