The Chronicle of Higher Education analyzed diversity of the freshman class at the flagship university in each of the 50 states, comparing the domestic student population to the ethnic composition of each state. The bottom line is that the domestic student population of most flagships shows significant underrepresentation of American Indian/Native Alaskan, Black, and Hispanic students (URMs) when compared to the demographics of the state population. The difference in URMs at flagships ranged from +0.7 at the University of Maine to -37.4 at the University of California, Berkeley with the overall national average at -22.2%.
Is this an appropriate, or the only appropriate measure of ethnic diversity? And, curiously, the Chronicle left out a large and important group, Asian American students.
I think that the ethnic diversity of the student body reflects several priorities. First, does the flagship enroll an ethnically diverse reflection of the resident students of the state? Second, do students attending the university receive the benefits of attending an ethnically diverse university, even if the ethnic diversity of their state may be limited? Though the diversity of the freshman class is important, the success of enrolled students by ethnicity is certainly also very important.
Let’s look at #1 (Maine), #50 (UCB), and my own university, University of Idaho (#11). Maine enrolls almost 50% out-of-state students; Idaho 25%, Berkeley is capped at 18%. I was not able to tease out ethnicity by resident status for Maine and Berkeley, but there may be surprises embedded in the data. At Idaho, for example, more than 1/2 of all black students are out of state, student athletes…hardly a representative sample.
Second, look at a table that compares these three states, their flagship URM data to their state and national data.
| State Population | Freshman Domestic Students | Total URMDifferences | ||||||
| %Black | %Native | %Hispanic | %Black | %Native | %Hispanic | Student-State | Student-Nation | |
| Maine | 1.3 | 0.6 | 1.6 | 2 | 1 | 4.9 | 4.4 | -21.9 |
| Idaho | 0.7 | 1.3 | 12.4 | 1.1 | 0.8 | 13 | 0.5 | -14.9 |
| California | 6.5 | 1.7 | 39 | 1.7 | 0.1 | 17.6 | -27.8 | -10.4 |
| National | 12.6 | 0.9 | 16.3 | 5.2 | 0.5 | 10.9 | -13.2 | -13.2 |
Though the table is a bit tough to read, I think that one can see that Berkeley underrepresents its state population, but closely reflects national diversity…more closely than even that national flagship average. And, though Maine is “more diverse” than its state…the student body does not reflect the experience of our nation.
Numbers alone can’t tell the diversity story…but let’s be clear about what the numbers we collect mean.
