Expanding Opportunity in Higher Education: Leveraging Promise

1. Introduction: Creating a 21st-century Vision of Access and Equity in Higher Education

The United States is facing a severe crisis of opportunity for higher education compounded by inadequate financing, failure to address the educational needs of an exploding population of students of color, excessive reliance on flawed testing systems, inadequate investment in increasing space for a growing population , and major reversals of civil rights policies that have changed the face of selective colleges. As often happens, these problems have become critical in the most vivid form in the nation’s largest state, California, the state that prided itself on the strongest system of public universities in the country: a three-tier system that became the model for many states and was supposed to guarantee access for all. This book reports on the massive challenges facing California and the responses of both academics looking at the state’s educational system as a whole and those within the policy system who are trying to keep it going in difficult times. The book reveals a system that simply is not up to the challenges it faces and presents a range of large and small ways in which it can become more responsive and more equitable. This volume began with 1 PATRICIA GÁNDARA GARY ORFIELD Chapter One Introduction: Creating a 21st-century Vision of Access and Equity in Higher Education an extraordinary exchange between researchers and policy makers in Sacramento in the fall of 2003, and the resulting chapters and analyses raise issues that will be of interest to those concerned with higher education policy and with racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic equity across the nation. During the last several decades a disquieting change has been occurring with respect to the United States’ educational standing in the world. Once the unquestioned leader in availability and quality of public education, with the highest per capita level of education, the United States has fallen behind several other nations. Although among 55–65 year olds, it still ranks number one in college completion, among 25–34 year olds it has fallen behind Canada, several Northern European and Asian countries (OECD, 2006). The growing percentage of students from groups with high drop out rates threatens to make this pattern even worse. For example, in a new analysis of the Census Bureau’s current population survey data, Swanson (2004) argues that the four-year graduation rate for Blacks and Latinos in the US is no more than about 50 percent. Moreover, while about 29 percent of Whites in the 25- to 29-year-old age cohort achieve at least a bachelor’s degree, only 16 percent of Blacks and 11 percent of Latinos—who now comprise almost one-third of that population cohort—achieve this level of education. What has happened to U.S. higher education policy over the last half century that resulted in such extraordinary success and now such loss of status? On the heels of World War II, the Congress saw the need to reintegrate hundreds of thousands of young men and women back into a changed economy and to reward them for service to the nation. Public Law 346, also known as the GI Bill, was passed by Congress in 1944 and opened the doors of higher education to many individuals who would otherwise not have been able to attend college. The GI Bill helped open what had been a very narrow path to college for lower income ex-servicemen, including African Americans and Latinos, and the nation footed the bill for tuition1 as well as for the major capital investments that were required to radically increase capacity in institutions of higher education. It is widely acknowledged (Henry, 1975; Olson, 1974) that the huge investments in higher education created an educated citizenry that far outpaced other industrialized nations and fueled what would become during the 1950s an economy without rival; the United States became the unquestioned leader in research and technology. As a result, the American economy flourished in areas as diverse as agriculture and computer chip technology . Post–World War II education policies created what came to be known as the American Era. Even in the face of such cultural and economic successes, the second half of the 20th century was not without serious social challenges. The civil 2 Patricia Gándara and Gary Orfield rights movement, the women’s movement, and a new consciousness about the inequalities that existed in Western society blossomed in this period. In 1961, in response to the growing...