After last year’s controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision on colleges’ use of point systems to increase minority enrollment – including the University of Massachusetts at Amherst – schools have been forced to make changes while they try to maintain diverse student bodies. Only time will tell, but UMass Amherst’s changes may be an example for institutions around the country.
UMass increased its admissions budget by 20 percent, specifically setting aside $300,000 to maintain a consistent level of minority enrollment at the university by increasing recruiting efforts. According to The Boston Globe, the expenditure succeeded, as the racial breakdown of the school’s freshman class has held steady.
Considering the large size of UMass-Amherst, the money spent on maintaining diversity was not an extravagant expenditure. The change was a positive solution to a divisive issue, and every university, including Boston University, should take heed. Indeed, BU must not just work to maintain its level of minority enrollment but increase it – BU for some reason has not managed to attract enough African-Americans, as admissions statistics indicate, and increasing recruiting efforts in inner cities and areas with large concentrations of minorities could go a long way. BU is well-known as an extremely diverse school when it comes to international students, but it lacks in other areas of diversity.
An increase in the number of recruiters sent out to attract students should also increase the overall level of interest in BU, as UMass application numbers indicate – according to the Globe, the school’s total applications have jumped by 10 percent. Sending a larger number of recruiters to areas of the country that many other universities ignore will only increase the opportunities available to those students and increase the diversity of BU.
BU has made a name for itself by offering a considerable amount of financial aid to its students, and the school should do a better job of advertising the its many opportunities to students who may not have thought college was an option. Any improvements in minority enrollment will make BU a better school as a whole, and UMass-Amherst’s example seems like a good place to start.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
