Students of Color at Private Universities

In response to comments to this post, I decided to take a quick gander through the internets to find the percentage of students of color at a variety of private colleges and universities, elite and not.* I split off Asian-Americans specifically, as they are not an under-represented group,** and do not include international students except insofar as they are included in other ethnicities. I was curious to find out whether, in fact, these elite schools had lower enrollments of minority students than their more mainstream peers. I selected private school specifically because their enrollment base was less likely to be geographically based -- while many people attend the local public university because it's close by, I roughly believed that private schools were more likely to have a national admissions pool. That is to say, people who are applying to private schools are more likely to apply to academically comparable schools around the country. That obviously is a wild over-generalization, but it helps stabilize the pool somewhat.

This is entirely non-scientific. The colleges were chosen by the randomized sample of "I thought of them." I did make vague efforts at geographical diversity, however, as well as include both large and small schools. Hence, each category should have 5 small colleges, and 6 larger ones.

"Elite" [Non-Asian/Asian]

Amherst: 28% (15%/13%)

Brown: 30% (16%/14%)

Carleton: 22% (12%/10%)

Chicago: 25% (12%/13%)

Duke: 32% (18%/14%)

Harvard: 30% (16%/14%)

Pomona: 33% (19%/14%)

Stanford: 47% (23%/24%)

Swarthmore: 36% (17%/19%)

Williams: 30% (19%/11%)

Yale: 30% (17%/13%)

"Non-Elite" (Non-Asian/Asian)

Allegheny: 6% (3%/3%)

Beloit: 9% (7%/2%)

Bennington: 6% (4%/2%)

Boston University: 22% (8%/13%)

Drexel: 26% (13%/13%)

Goucher: 11% (8%/3%)

Seton Hall: 28% (22%/6%)

St. Olaf: 8% (3%/5%)

Tulsa: 17% (15%/2%)

Villanova: 17% (10%/7%)

Wake Forest: 14% (9%/5%)

As I said, this is entirely non-scientific. However, it does point that elite schools tend to have a higher enrollment of students of color -- particularly in small schools. Non-elite liberal arts colleges are almost painfully White -- only Goucher managed to eke its way into double-digits in its minority enrollment. Meanwhile, Carleton, the least diverse "elite" school, still had a higher percentage of non-White students than all but three "non-elite" schools. The most diverse non-elite school, Seton Hall, would have tied for 9th with Amherst College on the elite list.

A few words about the data. First of all, it's entirely non-scientific. I plugged in colleges as they sprang to mind. My only qualification is that they were not public universities, and not explicitly religious academies (a religious affiliation, as in St. Olaf's, was okay). Second, it's incomplete. Many students don't report their ethnicity. So, for example, the total percentages for Amherst's students of color only reaches 28% -- but Caucasians are only listed as comprising 45% of the population. Third, the variety of locations for international students confounds that data somewhat -- I don't know whether they are incorporated into ethnic groups, and if not, I don't know how the international student population breaks down in terms of White/non-White.

* This is a totally arbitrary designation by me, but when I say "elite" I mean the absolute cream of the crop. The schools I designate as "non-elite" are still fine institutions in their own right.

** This is itself misleading, as while East and South Asians tend to do quite well in the college admissions game, Southeast and Island Asian students are, in fact, quite underrepresented. It is somewhat of a anomaly to group, say, Koreans, Indians, Hmong, and Filipinos in the same group. But there is no way to disconnect them, so I make the compromises I must.