Strategic Plan to Ensure Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Connecticut Public Higher Education, 2011. Annual Report
Author: Connecticut Department of Higher Education
Date: 2011-04-00
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Strategic Planning,Higher Education,Public Colleges,American Indians,Minority Groups,Hispanic American Students,Enrollment Trends,Statistical Data,Disproportionate Representation,Graduation Rate,African American Students,Academic Achievement,Asian American Students,College Outcomes Assessment

Increasing the participation of minority groups at public colleges and universities is a longstanding goal of the Board of Governors for Higher Education, as first outlined in its 1983  &quot;Strategic Plan to Ensure Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Connecticut Public Higher Education.&quot; The minority groups defined by the plan are: Hispanic/Latino, African American, Asian American and Native American--listed in order of their current proportional presence in the state's population. Subsequently, the Board's &quot;Strategic Plan&quot; was enacted by the state legislature, which since 1986 has provided the Board with an annual allocation to promote achievement of the plan's student diversity goals. Although the plan mandates no numeric goals, it holds campuses to the ideal that the racial and ethnic make-up of their students and graduates should reflect the diversity of the state's residents. Typically this report declares that since enactment of the &quot;Strategic Plan,&quot; students attending and graduating from Connecticut's public colleges and universities have become more racially and ethnically diverse and the report period continues a historic trend of year-to-year incremental progress. However, the new racial/ethnic designations established by the U.S. Census Bureau and utilized by the state's institutions of higher education in the fall of 2010 preclude comparative analysis with previous report periods. Although the number of minority students enrolled in the state's public institutions in the fall of 2010 at 31,654 exceed the 28,483 enrolled in the fall of 2009, the differences in how students declared their racial and ethnic backgrounds does not allow for a statistically valid comparison. The public institutions actually experienced a slight decline in the number of minority students receiving undergraduate degrees (associate and bachelor's degrees) from 2,865 during the 2009-10 academic year from a record high figure of 2,907 during the 2008-09 academic year. It is undeterminable as to whether or not the changes in racial/ethnic designations had any impact upon reports regarding the conferring of undergraduate degrees for the 2009-10 academic year. In any event, the data from this report period will be utilized as baseline data for comparative analyses hereafter regarding the diversity of students enrolled and graduated from the state's public colleges and universities. This year will also be a transitional year for the Department of Higher Education's programmatic initiatives undertaken to advance attainment of the state's student diversity goals. The Connecticut College Access and Success (ConnCAS) Program, which provides performance-based grants to the public institutions in support of outreach, admission and retention activities in the implementations of their respective &quot;Strategic Plan to Promote the College Access and Success of Underrepresented Minority Students,&quot; will be changed to two distinct grant programs to become better strategically aligned with the needs of the public universities and the state's community colleges, respectively. Adjustments in the Connecticut Collegiate Awareness and Preparation (ConnCAP) Program will allow for structural collaboration with the federally-funded GEAR UP Program which has a similar mission. (Contains 5 tables.) [For &quot;Strategic Plan to Ensure Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Connecticut Public Higher Education, 2010. Annual Report,&quot; see ED527899.]