Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Black Enrollment at Columbia Tops Ivy League for Third Year

Columbia Spectator
By Aaron Kiersh
Published December 08, 2008

Columbia leads the Ivy League in enrolled black first-years for the third consecutive year, according to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. The class of 2012 includes 162 African-American students, or 12.1 percent of the class, up 80 percent from 2004.
Columbia is the only Ivy League institution where the first-year class is more than 10 percent black.
Black Student Organization president and Multicultural Recruitment Committee member Ruqayyah Abdul-Karim, CC ’10, was unsurprised by the statistics.
“I had an idea that our student body is now at or over 50 percent students of color,” Abdul-Karim said. “I am really encouraged by these figures because they are very reflective of the national population, which is what we set out to do.”
Abdul-Karim denied that admissions officers had applied affirmative action to admit a designated number of minorities.
“We do not want more of one demographic versus another,” she said. “We do not have outreach efforts specifically geared towards one specific ethnic group. We do work hard to cultivate prospective first-generation college students and low-income young people. We want to make sure the opportunity is there for everyone.”

Full Story: http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2008/12/08/black-enrollment-columbia-tops-ivy-league-third-year

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