Blacks Remain an Extreme Minority at UC Campuses
BERKELEY, Calif.
James Marshall didn’t expect it would be easy, being one of just a handful of Black students at the University of California, Berkeley’s, high-ranking business school.
It wasn’t.
But his payoff came at graduation — job interviews with some of the country’s most prestigious firms.
“It’s about getting that set of rules: OK, this is how you engage an employer; this is how you get this job,” says Marshall.
This fall, preliminary figures put 129 new Black freshmen at Berkeley out of a class of about 4,000, slightly higher than last year, but still an extreme minority. About 11 percent of the class will be Hispanic, well out of step with a state where Hispanics make up about 30 percent of the population and are projected to be the largest ethnic group by 2011.
