One of the authors of a new study on the disproportionately high number of immigrants among Blacks attending U.S. colleges and universities says “there is no cause for alarm if diversity in higher education is what most matters. But for affirmative action values, it is problematic.”
According to “Black Immigrants and Black Natives Attending Selective Colleges and Universities in the United States” published in the American Journal of Education by Princeton University and University of Pennsylvania researchers, first- or second-generation immigrants comprise a disproportionately high percentage of the Black student population at U.S. universities, with the percentage increasing in proportion to the selectivity of the institution. More than 40 percent of the Black population at Ivy League colleges are of immigrant origin, despite comprising just 13 percent of the Black population overall.
The report raises important questions about diversity in higher education and affirmative action, says co-author Dr. Camille Charles, a faculty associate director at Penn’s Center for Africana Studies.
“For affirmative action values, it’s problematic,” she says. “It is more severe in selective schools, where immigrants are more privileged in terms of admissions.”
But if “diversity is what most matters, then this is interesting… but not any cause for alarm.”
Since little research has been done on the topic to date, the report documents similarities and differences between the Black American and Black immigrant populations. The disparity in college attendance, particularly at the nation’s premier universities, first gained national attention in 2003, when Harvard University professors Lani Guinier and Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. noted that of the university’s 530 Black undergraduates in 2003-2004, only about 180 could claim a completely Black American heritage.
Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen, the report found that 27 percent of the Black freshmen entering 28 selective colleges were first- or second-generation immigrants. That percentage rose when looking at private institutions. Forty-one percent of Black freshmen at Columbia, Penn, Princeton and Yale universities — the only Ivy League schools in the study — were of immigrant origin.
