Forty-three years have passed since the Supreme Court issued its decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated the nation's public schools, yet America's war over equal educational opportunities continues to rage. And the most heated battles in recent years have centered around access to education at the postsecondary level.

A series of federal court rulings and political battles have begun to effectively chip away at the legislative framework upon which the desegregation and affirmative action strategies are constructed. The message these rulings and actions seem to convey is that neither state nor federal government intervention is needed to assist the process of balancing the scales of opportunity, even when, as in Mississippi, the court finds that vestiges of segregation remain.

Today, even though record numbers of African Americans are enrolling in and graduating from colleges and universities around the country, whites continue to represent approximately 80 percent of the student population at four-year institutions, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). In contrast , African Americans, who according to a recent study published by The College Fund/UNCF represent approximately 14 percent of the traditional college-age population, constitute only 10 percent of the Student Population at four-year institutions. Data gathered by the NCES reveals that on the whole, minorities represent approximately 20 percent of all the students attending four-year institutions. It is important to note that of the Black students attending four-year institutions, approximately one in four attend a historically Black college or university (HBCU). On the faculty and administrative side of the higher education equation, the statistics paint an even less diverse picture. Roughly 88 percent of full-time faculty at the nation's colleges and universities are white, according the NCES. African Americans represent roughly 5 percent of full time faculty and many of these work at HBCUs.