The mission of the State University of New York is to provide high-quality, affordable, accessible higher education for all of New York’s citizens. Through the years, SUNY did a pretty good job in recruiting a diverse student body.
To cite one example, when faculty and administrators at SUNY’s College of Agriculture and Technology at Morrisville confronted declining enrollment numbers a few years ago, they decided to recruit more students from urban centers across New York state in order to maintain enrollment. The result is that now nearly 40 percent of Morrisville’s students are people of color, and the campus has attracted attention because of its proactive recruitment policies. And this year, SUNY has launched a systematic plan to recruit and engage historically underrepresented students and faculty on all campuses.
Why is this important? First, historically underrepresented students constitute a large and growing pool of potential SUNY applicants. Higher education analysts project that the population of Hispanic and other underrepresented students eligible to participate in public higher education will increase sharply over the next decade. By the year 2015, census and other data suggests that the majority of New York high school graduates will be from groups that have been historically underrepresented in SUNY.
Second, these demographic shifts, coupled with the need for an increasingly competitive workforce in New York, present public higher education policymakers with a challenge: to reduce educational inequities faced by underrepresented students while simultaneously maintaining the highest educational standards.
New York’s situation is not unique in regard to filling the higher education needs of Hispanics and others from historically underrepresented groups. As a recent report from the Pew Hispanic Center entitled “Recent Changes in the Entry of Hispanic and White Youth Into College†reminds us, a significant achievement gap exists nationwide for Hispanic students in mathematics, reading skills and science in comparison with their Anglo counterparts. On a more fundamental level, data presented in the report also shows a significant and growing gap between the rate of Hispanics and Anglo enrollment in four-year degree-granting institutions. In New York, the enrollment gap grew by 6 percentage points from 1996 to 2001 (from 9 to 15 percentage points). In 2001, there was a Hispanic enrollment gap in four-year degree-granting institutions in California (16 percent), Arizona (24 percent), New Jersey (11 percent), Florida (14 percent) and Texas (17 percent).
Fortunately, there are many people in the SUNY community dedicated to solving this problem. Last year, UUP joined then-SUNY Chancellor John Ryan, and legislative leaders such as Assembly Majority Leader Ron Canestrari and Assemblyman Peter Rivera, chair of the Assembly’s Puerto Rican/Hispanic Task Force, in formulating a systemwide diversity initiative at SUNY. Those discussions bore fruit: Last spring, SUNY created and funded the Office for Diversity and Educational Equity, under the leadership of Vice Provost Pedro Caban.
The goal of our diversity initiative was to restore the Empire State to its role as a national leader in seeking creative solutions to the needs of low-income, first-generation college students and English language learners. The new Office for Diversity and Educational Equity holds great promise to meet those students’ needs. We also anticipate that the high dropout rates for historically underrepresented, economically disadvantaged New Yorkers will also require an expanded outreach to adult learners in our information-based economy. Now that the diversity office is in place, the University is well positioned to nurture a more diverse group of SUNY faculty and students, who in turn will become the core of a highly qualified workforce that will ensure that New York state can successfully compete in an increasingly complex global economy.