Some sectors are applauding the gains of the past three decades in increasing overall college attendance. Yet the significant and growing achievement gap, between historically underserved students and those that have been historically well-served by American higher education, continues to undermine our nation’s economic prosperity and social well being. Our ability to eliminate this achievement gap, especially among students of color and low-income students, is increasingly dependent upon galvanizing our collective commitment to increase college access and success for all students.

With abundant research documenting the achievement gap on college campuses, why has the higher education community been slow to collect and analyze data disaggregated by race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status? The reasons are varied, complex and often inter-related. Some institutions are driven by financial models that focus on boosting student enrollment, often at the expense of addressing stagnant student persistence and success rates. Many institutions fail to distinguish between compositional diversity and educational equity. And, among other reasons, some institutions lack the financial and human capacity to develop systems that will yield meaningful data for analysis and action. As a first step, examining existing disaggregated data would identify factors that cause these outcome disparities.

Increasing pressure for educational institutions to increase their accountability may also compel colleges and universities to address these disparities. More and more enlightened postsecondary institutions are adopting evidence-based approaches to address the mitigating factors that perpetuate the achievement gap. These institutions are putting in place new policies, pedagogical approaches, programming and practices that work, and establishing them as core institutional functions.

One school that has successfully used data to improve practices is Loyola Marymount University (LMU).  As part of the Diversity Scorecard project, now called the Equity Scorecard, the LMU School of Science & Engineering examined data, disaggregated by race/ethnicity, on what courses students were taking, their grades in those courses, and their persistence from year to year.  Their grades suggested that the first year was particularly challenging for underrepresented minority students, with many not persisting through to the second year.  In response, LMU is planning to implement a summer bridge program to better prepare students for challenging first-year courses.