Stages in the Response of White Colleges and Universities to Black Students
In the broadest terms, the study on which this article is based addresses the question of the responsiveness of colleges and universities to a particular clientele group-black students. The study traces the implications of the impact of black students for other new clientele groups-other minorities, women, adult students-and for other external pressures on colleges and universities. This is a crucial question for understanding, in a fundamental way, the relations between institutions of higher learning and the larger society. For the most part, black students who attended predominantly white colleges and universities before 1967 entered gradually enough so that they could be accommodated without strain. This situation changed dramatically after 1967, when black enrollments increased sharply. In a companion research project, Arce has assembled the best available data on black enrollments in white colleges and universities from 1946 to 1974 [1]. Arce's study documents the fact that by 1968, the baseline year for our study, black students were attending white institutions in increasing numbers. Many studies have been made of the economic and educational backgrounds of black students, of their aspirations, and of their responses