The April 16, 2007 edition of Inside Higher Ed features comments made by CCRC Director Thomas Bailey at the Columbia University conference titled, The Future of Undergraduate Education - A Conference on College: Who Goes? Who Pays? and What Should Students Learn?

According to reporter Scott Jaschik:

Those at the conference got a bit of a challenge on the issue of racial diversity from Thomas R. Bailey, director of the Community College Research Center at Teachers College of Columbia. Bailey pointed out that the closest community college to Columbia is Bronx Community College. There are about 7,200 black and Hispanic students there. That’s about as many black and Hispanic undergraduates as there are in the eight Ivy League universities combined, he noted. And when considering how many of the Ivy undergraduates aren’t from low-income backgrounds, the contrast is even more striking, he said.

If education leaders really want to find ways to educate more minority students, Bailey said, it’s time to realize that the institutions that do have those students operate in “a different universe” from the Columbias of the world. How to best spend $400 million on financial aid? How to attract more low-income minority students? The first question isn’t exactly a hot topic in the Bronx, Bailey said, and as for the second, community colleges aren’t worried about their ability to attract low-income minority students. They do that quite well.

--The full-length article is available on the Inside Higher Ed web site at: http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/16/ugrad