| 摘要 | A recent article in The Nation by Mark Huelsman claims that elite public universities are being “resegregated.” As evidence, Huelsman cites his own research, published by the left-wing think tank Demos, which examines trends in enrollment at 67 “elite” public colleges (the 50 state flagship universities plus 17 others). Huelsman declares that “nearly half of these schools are enrolling a lower percentage of black students than they were in the mid-1990s.”
Framed like that, the picture for black college students might seem bleak at first glance. But dissecting Huelsman’s statement further undoes that perception. If “nearly half” of top public colleges are enrolling a lower share of black students than they did during the 1990s, then more than half of those schools must be enrolling an equal or greater share of black students today.
Moreover, Huelsman’s claim does not account for the size of the universities in question, nor the magnitude of the changes in black students’ enrollment. Simply counting up the number of schools which saw declines in black students’ enrollment share tells us little about how black students are faring at these schools overall.
Fortunately, we can count up students themselves, not just schools, with the very same data source that Huelsman used for his report. The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) tracks the number of students who enroll at each public university, and breaks down these totals by race. I used this data to calculate the distribution, by race and ethnicity, of degree-seeking domestic students attending Huelsman’s 67 “elite” public colleges and universities.
In 1996, the share of elite public college students who were black was 5.3%. In 2016, the share was, again, 5.3%. The trend line was entirely flat. There’s no evidence here to support the notion that America’s top state universities are becoming “resegregated.”
In fact, black students were virtually the only major racial or ethnic group that saw no change in enrollment share between 1996 and 2016. The share of students identifying as Hispanic more than doubled, from 5.5% to 12.4%. The share of Asian students increased as well. Meanwhile, white students’ enrollment share dropped from 75.3% to 62.5%, or roughly 13 percentage points.
All in all, minority students’ representation at elite public colleges increased by more than half between 1996 and 2016. That should be considered a win for advocates of diversity, plain and simple.
It’s perfectly fine to argue that black students’ enrollment share at these schools should be higher than 5.3%, and that elite public colleges’ failure to measurably increase that share over the last two decades is a problem. But claiming that elite public schools are being “resegregated” is a complete distortion of reality. |
