Education

Expanding access after affirmative action. Here are 2 big things colleges can do right now to increase diversity.

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Invest in more need-based financial aid. About 25 percent of financial aid provided by colleges goes to students from the wealthiest families … Because race and ethnicity are highly correlated with wealth, these practices disproportionately exclude Black and Hispanic students. We know that more money can be dedicated to need-based aid. … Recruit and admit more community-college transfers. Every year, an estimated 15,000 first-year, low-income community-college students earn at least a 3.7 grade-point average, yet they have not transferred to any four-year college. … Transfer students are a great source of diversity for two reasons. First, they have excelled in actual college courses, which is just as (or even more) predictive of later success in college than high-school admissions processes … Second, community-college students are far more likely to be low-income, Black, or Hispanic than those who start at four-year colleges.

View the full article from The Chronicle of Higher Education. [Subscription required.]