Rather than tinker with its admissions standards, the University of Colorado should step up its efforts to recruit and retain ethnic minorities in its quest for a more diverse student body and a more collegial campus atmosphere.
CU-Boulder’s goal must be graduating more ethnic minorities, not just getting more diverse faces on campus. Lowering or changing its admission standards to bring more minorities onto campus could hurt those students in the long run.
The number of ethnic minorities at CU-Boulder is embarrassingly low: The campus is only 1.5 percent African-American, 5.8 percent Latino and 6 percent Asian.
The university recently issued a series of recommendations, including changing its standards, to increase minority enrollment numbers and improve the climate on campus. They’re now being reviewed by a 60-member diversity task force.
CU already is allowed to admit up to 14 percent of its students through a “window” in which they don’t have to meet regular admissions standards. Schools have used that window to recruit student-athletes and also those who bring something besides stellar academic credentials to the school, such as strong leadership skills, musical talents or ethnic diversity.
The Colorado Commission on Higher Education is shrinking that window to 10 percent in 2008, and that’s raising some concern with us. But even when the window was 20 percent in 2003, CU did a poor job of recruiting and retaining minorities.
Boulder is by no means the only school that struggles with ethnic diversity. An hour’s drive away, Colorado State University also has anemic numbers.
However, part of the answer for CU’s woes can’t be found in Boulder or Fort Collins. It’s a K-12 problem. The pool of ethnic minority students for CU to recruit already is too small, as far too many minorities drop out before graduation. In fact, only about half of African-American and Latino ninth-graders graduate from high school within four years in Colorado – many having disappeared long before they could worry about SAT scores or other admission requirements.
K-12 needs to build a better pipeline to our colleges and universities.
One school already is doing just that. The Denver School of Science and Technology and CU have worked out an arrangement where any student with a 3.25 or higher grade point average is guaranteed admission to CU. About 70 percent of the charter school’s students are minorities, so even if just a handful accept that offer in coming years, CU’s minority rate will climb steadily.
Many of DSST’s top students will be sought after by top universities, however, posing yet another challenge for CU.
First up for CU, though, is creating a welcoming environment on campus, and helping foster a similar environment in the community, so ethnic minorities feel at ease. If minorities don’t feel welcome, no initiative is going to be be worthwhile.
CU is right to worry about its diversity numbers, but must remember there’s a real person behind each number. Lowering standards to just get more of them through the door isn’t the answer.
