College Enrollment Analysis

Now that the Supreme Court has upheld the use of affirmative action in college admissions, many observers are calling the ruling a victory for diversity. But issues concerning how to sustain and encourage diversity are far from settled on most campuses across America. Colleges still have to grapple with questions about the mix of students they enroll, the experiences those students have, and the academic and social progress they make.
Several years ago, the James Irvine Foundation, where I used to direct the higher-education program, decided to demand more of the 30 or so private colleges in California to which it had given grants to support diversity. Why? Progress in the enrollment of underrepresented minority students had stalled, and it was not clear whether efforts to
A college should evaluate who chooses the institution, and to whom the institution offers admission. The first part of the analysis should look at outreach: "What is the economic and ethnic profile of the high schools that we visited, the students whom we talked to, and the students who visited us?"
Each institution should then compare the results to the profiles of those students who actually applied and enrolled. Although that may sound like basic enrollment management, it's amazing how often the various parts of a college can fail to work together. While one office is working furiously to redress a failure to increase the diversity of the student body, another is reaching out to the same group of predominantly white, high-income students that it always has.
Who gets financial aid? A president boasted in a newspaper about using institutional financial aid as a way to enhance his college's
"reputation." He said that he gave away, for example, a $12,000 scholarship to a student who got an offer of only $2,000 from another institution. I don't know how much financial need she had, but if her major qualification was her grades, this large scholarship