The Impact of College Diversity

Struggles and Successes at Age 30

Elizabeth Aries

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781439923191
  9781439923184
• eBook ISBN:
  9781439923207
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In 2005, Elizabeth Aries chronicled what 58 Amherst College freshman—Black and white, affluent and lower-income—learned from racial and class diversity. Her study emphasized the value of campus diversity at elite colleges. Four years later, Aries interviewed the same students about their diversity experiences as they graduated. Now, eight years later, she re-interviews her participants to see how and to what extent race and class continue to play a role as they move into adulthood.  

The Impact of College Diversity details how exposure to diversity in college helped shape Black and white graduates process issues of economic and racial privilege and inequality at age 30. She investigates how college diversity experiences also facilitate the attainment of upward social mobility in lower-income students and the role that mobility played in their relationships with family and friends in their home communities. Aries further examines how interactions with peers of another race and class influenced development of citizenship skills and civic engagement, as well as Black students' ability to cope with the challenges they faced in the professional world.  

Aries concludes her study with a discussion of why elite colleges have been beneficial in promoting upward mobility in lower-income students, and the importance of achieving equity and inclusion in making diversity initiatives successful.
 

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Genesis of the Study and the Age 30 Follow-Up
• 2. The Changing Understanding of Race and Whiteness
• 3. Learning from Racial Diversity
• 4. Learning from Class Diversity
• 5. Democracy Outcomes
• 6. The Pathway to Upward Social Mobility
• 7. Bridging Two Worlds
• 8. Race and Class in the Workplace
• 9. Next Steps
• Appendix A: Research Methods
• Appendix B: Survey Questions
• Appendix C: Interview Questions
• Notes
• References
• Index