It will take almost a lifetime — or seven decades — for U.S. colleges and universities to achieve racial parity among its freshman classes, according to analysis by McKinsey & Co.
The study, which surveyed more than 3,000 institutions with enrollment of about 2.4 million first-time students, found that nearly all the improvement in representation in the seven years to 2020 came from Hispanic and Latino students. If their rate of enrollment slows to match the pace of other minority students — with enrollment among Black and Native American students declining in some cases — parity will never occur, according to Duwain Pinder, one of the McKinsey researchers.
“There is this perception that we’ve actually given advantages and made it easier for Black, Hispanic and Latino, and Native American students to get into highly-resourced colleges and universities, and if you’re not of those under-represented groups, you’re at a disadvantage,” Pinder said. “But that’s not true.”
