Discrimination in Recruitment, Admission, and Retention of Minority Graduate Students

Minority student enrollment in graduate schools is declining. The expectations of the early 1970s that minority groups at long last would be represented in graduate schools in proportionate numbers have not been realized. Black student enrollment in graduate schools plunged from 65,326 in 1976 to 54,686 in 1982, a 16.3 percent decline. By contrast, white graduate student enrollment dropped from 906,626 to 880,616, a 2.9 percent decline. Although total minority enrollments increased until 1980, by 1982 a decline was in progress, as Hispanic joined black enrollments in the decline.1 This article focuses on those American racial and ethnic minority groups who are least well represented in graduate schools: blacks, American Indians, Puerto Ricans, and Mexican Americans. To be sure, this underrepresentation is not solely the result of malevolent discrimination. Yet, segregation and discrimination gave birth to the situation, and their vestiges make underrepresentation difficult to eradicate. From a number of perspectives, recruiting minorities for graduate study is an important endeavor. Enrolling students with different cultural, experiential, and cognitive backgrounds into grad-