Recruiting, Redefining, and Recommitting: The Quest to Increase Socioeconomic Diversity at Amherst College

Abstract

While many selective and moderately selective schools have attempted to increase the numbers of low-income students and students of color in their student body, few have successfully done so. In this qualitative case study, I examine the efforts of an elite, private, liberal arts school, Amherst College, as it increased the socioeconomic diversity of its student body, and I highlight the College's comparative success in this endeavor. Using Bourdieu's social reproduction theory as an analytic frame, I argue that Amherst's success is a result of its historic commitment to diversity and equality as well as its contemporary initiatives and the combination of multiple efforts that transcend simple rhetoric. These initiatives include widening the applicant pool by intensifying recruitment efforts and broadening definitions of merit, hiring a dynamic president as the voice and leader of the diversity movement, and garnering widespread institutional support. This article also includes a survey of the status of low-income students and students of color in the nation's colleges and universities over time and a brief history of diversity trends in higher education since World War II.

Notes

1. I wrote this study under the commonly understood assumption that increasing socioeconomic diversity and expanding the student body promotes equal access to higher education, increases learning gains for all students, and improves society as a whole (Hurtado, Milem, Clayton-Pedersen, & Allen, 1999). Consequently, in this article, “success” is defined as increasing socioeconomic diversity to reflect the general United States population and the population of high-achieving students.

2. The COFHE institutions include Amherst, Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Carleton, Dartmouth, Mount Holyoke, Oberlin, Pomona, Smith, Swarthmore, Trinity, Wellesley, and Williams colleges; MIT; Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Princeton, Rice, Stanford, Washington University in St. Louis, Wesleyan, and Yale universities; University of Chicago; University of Pennsylvania; and University of Rochester (Consortium on Financing Higher Education, n.d.).

3. Pell Grant status is a common proxy for low-income status (Heller, 2003).

4. A new president, Carolyn A. Mantin, was inaugurated in August 2011.

5. In this study, socioeconomic diversity is defined by the percentage of incoming students of low income and/or of an underrepresented race.

6. Under this policy, low-income students were defined as students with a family income less than $40,000 a year.