Something worth
celebrating
"Overall, we have reason to feel good about what's been happening in the 1990s," says Dekker of Stanford. "There has been a huge national effort by foundations and universities, and there has been a payoff. We're seeing people choosing the Ph.D. route — people who could have gone to professional school with a guaranteed high income at the end of the day and a much less grueling program."
That is definitely worth celebrating. And while continued growth in minority doctorate production will require an even greater dedication of financial resources and administrative ingenuity, at least one observer thinks that time is on the side of the angels.
"One of the things that we have to remember is that the historiography of higher education figures significantly in this, too," notes English.
"Blacks and Latino Americans and Native Americans weren't even to any significant degree present in the nation's colleges until the late 1960s, early 1970s. The number since then has grown exponentially, but it's taken nearly 30 years to get a statistically significant number of (minorities) going on to college."
Graduate school is the next frontier, English says. "And it's our good fortune now to have such a group of bright undergraduates who are going to lead to a more significant representation in our faculties and on the shelves of our nation's libraries with their scholarship."
© Copyright 2005 by DiverseEducation.com
