Minority Access to Mass Higher Education, 1920-1970 project

Principal Investigator
Harold S. Wechsler
Professor, Educational Leadership

Description
The project synthesizes and extends scholarship on the 20th century encounter of women, African-American, Jewish, Hispanic, and Asian college students with American higher education.

Building on earlier scholarship concerning “elite” colleges and universities, this study focuses on municipal colleges, comprehensive colleges, and junior colleges – institutions that accommodated greater proportions of minority students and women. The inquiry examines the academic and vocational orientation and enrollment patterns of minority students; preference, discrimination, or impartiality in the admission of these students; and efforts by concerned national associations and social scientists to increase minority student comfort, mitigate hostility, and reduce prejudice on the college campus.

The research focuses on the years between 1920 and 1970, a time of rapid growth in the absolute number of minority and women students. Intensive historical analysis of about a dozen colleges and universities complements the examination of many “surveys,” self-studies, and accreditation reports of colleges and universities that delineate student demographics, enrollment patterns, and institutional accommodations.

Supported by
The Spencer Foundation

Timeframe
7/00-6/04