Campus administrators and students regularly lament the lack of racial and ethnic diversity at UW-Madison. They typically complain about the oppressiveness of the ""sea of white faces"" they see on Bascom Hill.
What kind of minority student representation would be required so everyone could agree that race/ethnic diversity has been achieved? Nobody has answered that question satisfactorily nor is it clear if much serious thought has been given to the question.
The answer can be illuminated with data from the Department of Public Instruction, the American College Testing Service and UW-Madison. Though the figures are subject to some limitations, they give a general picture for Wisconsin minority students of the narrowing of the pipeline of potential college students as they pass various benchmarks from 10th grade to admission to UW-Madison in fall 2006.
Here are the student pipeline benchmarks. Minorities represented an estimated 19 percent of all Wisconsin 10th graders in 2003-'04, and 13 percent of all high school graduates in 2005-'06. Minorities represented 11 percent of those taking the ACT for fall 2006 college entrance, and 9 percent of those who had completed the core academic subjects needed to attend college. Minorities represented only 8 percent of ACT test takers who graduated in the top quarter of their high school class and would be competitively admissible at UW-Madison.
As these figures reveal, the minority student pipeline narrows dramatically and rapidly. From 10th grade to high school graduation, the pool of minorities decreases by a third, dropping from 19 to 13 percent. Among high school graduates who took the ACT, the pool of minorities graduating in the top quarter of their class decreases by 40 percent, dropping from 13 to 8 percent.
Yet, Wisconsin minorities constitute 14 percent of all new Wisconsin freshmen admitted to UW-Madison for fall 2006. How could this occur? It happens because minority applicants who are not admitted competitively get another shot at being admitted through an additional review of their files. Representatives of TRIO and AAP—two programs dedicated to assisting minority and disadvantaged students—conduct this review.
Another way of seeing the dual standard used for admitting minority students comes from data supplied by Chancellor John Wiley to a Legislative Council hearing in early January 2007. If minority applicants for fall 2006 were admitted at the same rate as non-minority applicants with similar academic credentials (ACT and high school class rank), the number of minorities admitted would drop by 25 to 30 percent.
These rough estimates can help individuals think about what percentage of minority admits (and more importantly, minority enrollees) is needed to conclude that adequate minority representation has been achieved. Is that target best represented by the percentage of minority high school graduates? By the percentage that complete the core subjects required for admission? By the percentage who graduate from high school in the top quarter of their class? What do you think?
