Minority Access to Higher Education and its Social Outcomes

The social disadvantage of minority groups has been attributed to their inability to compete in the labor market due to lower rates of obtaining higher credentials, compared with middle-class Whites. During the 70’s and the 80’s, several large-scale policies attempted to promote minority access to higher education. This paper reviews two of these policies – the CUNY open admissions and the expansion of community colleges – and suggests that even though minority access to higher education has increased, this increase was counterbalanced by a rise in internal stratification within higher education. As a result, increased access did not generate equality of opportunity