Guest Editor's Comments: The Full Circle: TRIO Programs, Higher Education, and the American Future-Toward a New Vision of Democracy

Abstract

This issue of the Journal of Negro Education is both informed and motivated by recent pronouncements about the challenges facing higher education and its responsibility to ensure that all Americans have equal opportunity to learn. These pronouncements include those of Garibaldi (1997) and Astin (1998), whose analyses provide sweeping critiques of the American educational terrain. For his part, Garibaldi reviewed African American educational progress in the four decades since the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas Supreme Court ruling. Although his review concludes that notable improvements in the educational achievement of African American students have been realized, it also points out the persistence of many negative signs. These declining indexes indicate that educational parity for African Americans remains a distant goal. Astin, addressing a related topic, asserted the following in his analysis of the civic responsibility of higher education: The education of the remedial student is the most important educational problem in America today, more important than educational funding, affirmative action, vouchers, merit pay, teacher education, financial aid, curriculum reform and the rest. Providing effective remedial education would do more to alleviate our most serious social and economic problems than almost any other action we could take. (pp. 12-13) Both scholars speak to one of the most daunting challenges facing higher education in the United States. That challenge: to ensure higher levels of academic achievement for the rapidly growing population of students from low-income and racial/ethnic minority backgrounds who are destined to become the majority of the future U.S. college applicant pool. The nation's historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have successfully met this challenge for well over a century. In recent years, they have been joined by an increasing number of Hispanic-serving institutions (HACUs) and American Indian-- serving tribal colleges. However, if, as Astin asserts, U.S. higher education is to fulfill its civic responsibilities, a substantial number of predominantly White colleges and universities will have to make significant improvements in their rates of enrollment, retention, and graduation of minority and low-income students. TRIO programs-the focus of this issue-have much to offer institutions of higher learning that seek to improve the educational outcomes of such students. In one generation, these programs have implemented numerous successful strategies that have been shown to work effectively with first-generation-college, minority, and low-income students. When the first TRIO programs were established, however, few would have predicted their remarkable growth or significance in a rapidly changing society. The TRIO approach to expanding educational opportunity has thrived in the last third of the 20th century, and the growth of TRIO programs has been paralleled by a dramatic transformation in U.S. society. Americans are rapidly becoming more racially and ethnically diverse-a trend that demographers predict will continue into the new century. By the year 2000, 28% of all Americans will be people of color and / or Hispanic ancestry; this proportion is estimated to reach 32% by 2010 and 36% by 2020 (Bureau of the Census, 1996). By mid-century, Census projections indicate that minorities will make up 47% of the national population. These changes underscore the continuing need for the TRIO programs. They further highlight the importance of providing access to educational opportunity to all citizens and maintaining a reasonable level of social cohesion and harmony in a racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse society. This latter task may be as challenging as the task of achieving parity in educational opportunity itself. When Congress passed the Economic Opportunity Act in 1964, it authorized the launching of 18 pilot Upward Bound programs. …