The document analyzes enrollment trends in higher education over the past 15 years and finds that the system reinforces racial inequalities. It finds that 82% of new white enrollments have gone to the most selective 468 colleges, while 72% of Hispanic and 68% of African American enrollments have gone to two-year open access schools. As a result, whites attend colleges with greater resources that lead to higher completion rates, graduate enrollment, future earnings and degrees - even for equally qualified students - perpetuating racial inequalities across generations.

1. Separate & Unequal
How Higher Education Reinforces the Intergenerational
Reproduction of White Racial Privilege
By: Anthony P. Carnevale and Jeff Strohl
July 31, 2013

2. Overview
• The higher education system is more and more complicit as
a passive agent in the systematic reproduction of white racial
privilege across generations.This report analyzes enrollment
trends at 4,400 postsecondary institutions by race and
institutional selectivity over the past 15 years.
• Since 1995, 82 percent of new white enrollments have gone
to the 468 most selective colleges*, while 72 percent of new
Hispanic enrollment and 68 percent of new African-
American enrollment have gone to the two-year open-access
schools
* Barron’s Education Series, College Division. 2009 Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges. Hauppauge, NY: Barron’s Educational Series, 2008. A shortlist of
the 468 most selective colleges is available on our website. For a full list, please consult Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges.

3. • The good news is that the
percentage of African-
Americans and Hispanics
enrolling in postsecondary has
dramatically increased.
More African Americans and Hispanics are going
to postsecondary institutions, but it is a good news,
bad news story

4. • The vast majority of white
freshmen are going to the
468 most selective, four-year
colleges. African-American
and Hispanic freshmen, on
the other hand, are primarily
attending under-resourced
two- and four-year colleges.
The bad news is that there are two separate
secondary pathways

5. • Whites have an advantage over their African-
American and Hispanic peers since they attend
colleges with greater financial resources and higher
completion rates.
• As a result of attending more selective colleges, whites
have higher rates of graduate school enrollment and
advanced degree attainment, as well as higher future
earnings, even among equally qualified students.
These separate pathways lead to unequal
educational and economic outcomes

6. Whites are attending colleges that spend almost five times as much on
instruction as open-access two- and four-year colleges, which African
Americans and Hispanics disproportionately attend

7. Whites also attend colleges in which graduates have higher
predicted earnings than the colleges their African-American and
Hispanic peers attend

8. The inequality in the postsecondary system also
carries over to the labor force
• Workers with professional degrees earn more over a lifetime
than workers who dropped out of college

9. Your parents’ past can affect your future
• In the United States, parents’ education plays a large influence
on their children’s educational attainment and whites are twice
as likely as African Americans and three times as likely as
Hispanics to complete a BA or higher.

10. Conclusion
• The United States is currently stuck in a cycle where
whites take one educational path and African
Americans and Hispanics take a different one.
• These different paths result in unequal educational
opportunities that also lead to lower wages for
African Americans and Hispanics.
• Separate paths, combined with both unequal
outcomes and low social and economic mobility in
the United States has led to the intergenerational
reproduction of white racial privilege.

11. For more information:
See the full report at: cew.georgetown.edu/report/SeparateUnequal
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