“The higher education system is more and more complicit as a passive agent in the systematic reproduction of white racial privilege across generations. This is the core finding in a new study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW), Separate and Unequal: How Higher Education Reinforces the Intergenerational Reproduction of White Racial Privilege. Jeff Strohl, one of the coauthors, said, “The American postsecondary system increasingly has become a dual system of racially separate pathways, even as overall minority access to the postsecondary system has grown dramatically.” The authors find that white over representation in the nation’s most elite and competitive colleges (top 468 colleges) is increasing even as the white share of college-age students has declined.

• Since 1995, more than 80 percent of new white enrollments have been at the top 468 colleges and more than 70 percent of new African-American and Hispanic enrollments have been at the nation’s open-access two-year and four-year colleges.”