Selective Public Colleges Admit Black and Latino Students at Lower Rates

Among institutions of higher education, public universities are supposed to lead the charge in providing access to students of color, whose college-going numbers – though on the rise – have never matched those of white students.

But a new report that shines a spotlight on inequities within public systems finds that the most selective colleges among them may as well be elite private schools when it comes to admitting black and Latino students.

White students occupy almost two-thirds, or 64 percent, of the seats in selective public colleges even though they account for a little more than half, or 54 percent, of the college-age population in the U.S. Meanwhile, blacks and Latino students account for 36 percent of the college-age population, but only 19 percent are enrolled in selective public universities.

Those are just some of the top-line findings included in "Our Separate & Unequal Public Colleges," a report released last week by researchers at Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce.

The severity of the mismatch, they found, varies state to state. In California, for example, where 48 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds are Latino, only 25 percent of students enrolled in selective public colleges are Latino. In fact, Florida is the only state where selective public colleges reflect the Latino college-age population.

Even worse, black students aren't proportionately represented in selective public colleges in any state. In Alabama – the worst offender – 32 of every 100 college-age residents are black, but only 7 of every 100 students at the state's selective public colleges are black.

To be sure, black and Latino college enrollment rates are rising fast, and the overall percentage of white college students is declining. But at selective public colleges, white student enrollment has increased over the past decade more than the enrollment of black and Latino students combined.

"There are far more black and Latino students with the qualifications to attend selective colleges than ever get to attend one," Anthony Carnevale, director of the Center on Education and the Workforce and lead author of the report, said in a statement.

Carnevale blamed, in part, the overreliance selective public universities place on college entrances exams, including the SAT and ACT, as a measure of who should be admitted.

"Like many factors in college admissions, the argument favoring marginal differences in test scores is just another name for affirmative action for already-privileged whites," he said.

But access is just the beginning, the researchers stressed. Diverting black and Latino students to less selective public colleges and universities sets off a chain reaction that ultimately hurts their chances of ever graduating.

For example, selective public colleges spend more money on instructional and academic support for students than less selective public colleges, including community colleges, because they receive more in state and local funding. In fact, the gap in instructional and academic support spending per student between selective and less selective public colleges widened from $8,800 in 2005 to $10,600 in 2015.

"The funding divide between selective public colleges and open-access public colleges is due in part to an elite political bargain among legislators, governors, selective public colleges, and affluent, mostly white families," Martin Van Der Werf, associate director of editorial and postsecondary policy at the Center on Education and the Workforce and co-author of the report, said in a statement.

Researchers found that 10 states spend at least three times more per student on instructional and academic support at selective public colleges than they do at their less selective peers.

That spending, Van Der Werf argues, is directly related to graduating: The average student has an 85 percent chance of graduating at a selective public college, compared to only 51 percent at an open-access public college. Blacks and Latinos who attend selective public colleges graduate at an 81 percent rate, while those at open-access public colleges have a 46 percent graduation rate.