How and Why You Diversify Colleges – The New York Times

Frank Bruni on the efforts by USA elite colleges to broaden socioeconomic diversity of their student populations:

The socioeconomic diversity at elite colleges is hardly the most vital concern about higher education. These colleges serve a small fraction of the country’s students.

But that diversity is important nonetheless. It’s a mirror of our values — in particular, of how well we own up to stacked decks and how willing we are to make adjustments.

Amherst is an exemplar of such adjustments. It’s tweaking campus operations to recognize that some less affluent students stick around during breaks. It’s marshaling extra resources so students from low-income families can take on the sorts of unpaid internships and research opportunities that other students do.

I mentioned community colleges before: About 10 years ago, Amherst took just seven transfers from those schools. It has taken 34 in each of the last two years.

The college’s president told me that one of her current passions is to admit more military veterans, who bring to the campus abilities, experiences and outlooks that other students don’t possess.

She wasn’t talking about doing them a kindness. She wasn’t outlining a social experiment or anything gimmicky. She was embracing the reality that real learning and a real preparation for citizenship demand the intersection of different life stories and different sensibilities. Colleges should be making that happen.

Source: How and Why You Diversify Colleges – The New York Times