Washington -- The nation's students of color made significant gains in college enrollment and the number of degrees they earned in recent years, but the gap between them and their white counterparts on all educational levels is glaring, says a report released this month by the American Council on Education (ACE).

While successful affirmative action policies in higher education have played a critical role in fostering those gains, they "remain fragile," said ACE President Robert H. Atwell. "Affirmative action programs have made a significant contribution to minority advancement, and we must resist the efforts of opponents to dismantle them," he added.

The continuous educational gap between white students and students of color demonstrates the need to maintain and, in some cases, strengthen affirmative action programs rather than end them, the study says.

Underrepresented on Campus According to the "Fourteenth Annual Status Report on Minorities in Higher Education," students of color are underrepresented on most campuses. Approximately 23 percent of all 18-to-24-year-old high school graduates are American Indian, Hispanic or African American. However, students from these groups make up only 16 percent of enrollment at all four-year colleges -- 12 percent when those attending historically Black colleges and universities and Hispanic-serving institutions are excluded from the calculation.

"The numbers [in the report] show that there has been progress," says Deborah Carter, associate director of ACE's Office of Minorities in Higher Education and a co-author of the report, "and we have better qualified students" -- as evidenced by higher combined Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) scores and high school graduation rates.

The data, said Dr. Reginald Wilson, senior ACE scholar, suggest that affirmative action programs have worked, "but more effort is needed to address the underrepresentation of students of color in higher education."