Higher education rode a roller coaster in 1995, a year of actions that provoked rage and hope, sorrow and joy.

A review of important developments, trends and ideas of 1995 offers a sense of the ups and downs for minorities in higher education.

The Courts & the Classroom

The year was marked by two fresh threats to the drive to achieve racial diversity in higher education.

In one action that strikes at Black access to higher education, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review a three-judge panel's decision striking down a scholarship program for Blacks at the University of Maryland.

In May the high court let stand a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in favor of Daniel J. Podberesky, a Hispanic who was rejected for the university's Benjamin Banneker Scholarship program.

The program provides full tuition, room and board to about 80 Black students.

In December, 1995 Podberesky received a check for $32,863, the cost of four years at the university.

The court voted 8-3 to overturn the race-based scholarship, rejecting the university's contention that the scholarships could help remedy the university's past policy of excluding African Americans.

In another key legal challenge for Blacks in higher education, a federal judge rejected an attempt to shut down Mississippi's historically Black colleges and universities and directed the state to equalize admissions policies at its Black and white schools.

The action in the latest round in the United States vs. Fordice desegregation case came on March 7 when U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers Jr. overruled Mississippi's suggested approach to desegregate higher education. State officials wanted to shut down the historically Black Mississippi Valley State University or to merge predominantly white Mississippi University for Women with the white-majority Mississippi State University.

Presidential Transitions

For Black administrators, the year began on a upbeat note with the ascension of Ruth Simmons to the helm of Smith College.