In addition to serving as a co-chair of the Council for Aid to Education's Commission on National Investment in Higher Education (CNIHE), Thomas Kean, president of Drew University and former governor of New Jersey, was recently appointed to the president's newly formed advisory commission on race. Following the CNIHE press conference, Gov. Kean discussed the report and the advisory commission with Black Issues In Higher Education:

What is the key thing you'd like the President and Congress to take from this [CNIHE] report on higher education?

The key thing that I'd like them to understand is that if we continue to do things [on a] business as usual [basis], hundreds and thousands of their constituents are going to be denied the right to a college education.

Is there a connection between your position on the race advisory board and this report?

The most dramatic tie is [that] the people who are going to be left out [of participation in college] first are people who are Black, people who are Hispanic, people who are poor. So if these trends continue, the divide between rich and poor, Black and white is going to widen. And so the social contract, the social fabric of this country is going to be much more difficult to maintain.

How do you see linking the results of the study to the task you will have on the advisory board on race?

I happen to believe that we will never solve the problems of race in this country, which is so tied up with the right to opportunity, without looking at our young people and looking at our education system in a major way. And that starts with K through 12 [kindergarten through twelfth grade], and goes right into the recommendations we make in this report. Many of our problems with race are because we have denied opportunity to people in this country. We cannot continue to do that. The doorway to opportunity is education and if we don't address education in our final recommendation to the President, I don't think we will have done our jobs.