National statistics on college enrollment indicate that access, retention and the quality of life in higher education for African American and Latino students have not been flourishing in recent years. This is the case despite—or perhaps as a consequence of—the Supreme Court’s most recent judgment supporting race as a voluntary criterion for admission decisions. Such data suggest the need for renewed exploration of continuing institutional, systematic and policy barriers to minority participation.

With support from the Ford Foundation and other sources, the NCID projects on Promoting Equity in Urban and Higher Education provide monitoring of progress on minority access in higher education, along with studies of the college pipeline for minority students. These projects aim to provide increased and sustained attention to structurally defined race inequity problems with a focus on improving statistics and reporting that might contribute new solutions to the problem.  The overarching long-term goals of our project involve:
  • Expanding and enriching the field of higher education policy research on race equity–in particular, but not limited to, the topics of access and retention of minority college students
  • Using new research to improve discourse and practice within the higher education community
  • Establishing sustained, long-term capacity in the form of research consortia that support improvements in college preparation, along with opportunities for college application, enrollment, and success for students Detroit, Washington DC and other major cities where minority students have been historically represented in higher education
Principal Investigators for the Project Promoting Equity in Urban and Higher Education
Edward P. St. John, Professor Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, University of Michigan
William T. Trent, Professor of Policy Studies, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL
John B. Williams, Vice President, Public Welfare Foundation, Washington, DC