Up, Up and Away: Trends in Minority Enrollment

If you’re a minority student you will appreciate the newest reports from the U.S. Department of Education that forecast the numbers of minority students to continue to voraciously outpace your white counterparts. The recent findings were reported in the UNLV Rebel Yell, “Minority Enrollment May Rise Nationwide.”

According to the article, the ED is anticipating a “boom” between now and 2015 during which sharp spikes of minority students, Latinos in particular, will take their place on college campuses. Latino students are among the largest minority group in the U.S. and are one of the least represented in higher education.

Students seeking scholarship and grant money are also in luck. Especially abundant are those scholarships that offer tuition awards to minorities and women who purse careers in traditionally under-represented fields, such as engineering, math, sciences, law and teaching.

Sarita Brown who works with the group Excelencia in Education is quick to reinforce the fact that the ED’s projections while encouraging are purely math at this point. While the results emulate a movement that has already begun, she says that unless increased federal, state and private funds are made available for minorities the projected numbers are not likely to play out.

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