Comparative and Predictive Analyses of Black and White Students' College Achievement and Experiences

Abstract

Ever since the 1954 landmark Supreme Court case of Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, efforts have been made to achieve greater desegregation at all levels of formal education. As a result of the gradual elimination of racially discriminatory barriers to higher education, more blacks began attending college in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, even though those two decades were the greatest overall enrollment growth years in the history of American higher education, black enrollment increased more than twice as much as total enrollment. In 1965, for example, black undergraduates represented 4.8 percent of all undergraduates in the United States, compared to 10.2 percent in 1980 [42]. This remarkable increase in black enrollment appears on the surface to herald a great movement toward the achievement of equality in higher education. However, an examination of students' college performance reveals that some formidable challenges remain to be faced by American colleges and universities in the quest for equality. Because of the enormous increase in the interest of minority students in attending college, many barriers to access have been challenged. Perhaps none has been challenged as strongly as traditional admissions standards of colleges and universities. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, there were many debates regarding traditional college admis-