ABSTRACT-An experiment varying the racial (Black, White) and opinion composition in small-group discussions was conducted with college students (N 5 357) at three universities to test for effects on the perceived novelty of group members' contributions to discussion and on participants' integrative complexity. Results showed that racial and opinion minorities were both perceived as contributing to novelty. Generally positive effects on integrative complexity were found when the groups had racialand opinion-minority members and when members reported having racially diverse friends and classmates. The findings are discussed in the context of social psychological theories of minority influence and social policy implications for affirmative action. The research supports claims about the educational significance of race in higher education, as well as the complexity of the interaction of racial diversity with contextual and individual factors.Previous research has found that racially diverse educational environments are associated with positive intellectual and social outcomes for college students

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We examine how race and class influenced the lives of six African American high school seniors who attended a predominantly white, elite, independent secondary school. Race and class contributed to an organizational habitus of the school characterized by white and wealthy privilege. Interaction of that dominant habitus with the dissimilar individual habitus of the students resulted in a form of symbolic violence—symbolic violence the black students knowingly endured in exchange for the social mobility afforded by attending the elite school.

This study examines differential college-choice behavior and outcomes among Asian Pacific American (APA) student subpopulations with the goal of examining the extent to which the Asian American population is, in fact, a homogeneous "model minority" in college destinations and decision-making processes. The results suggest that their postsecondary decisions, opportunities, and destinations vary across and within ethnic and socioeconomic class subpopulations, challenging common assumptions about these students and their participation in U.S. higher education.

Motivated by increasing attention to citizenship development in American higher education, this exploratory study examines the level of involvement in and commitment to community service among higher education faculty. Although most report performing some form of community or volunteer service, women, non-White, and lower-ranking faculty tend to be the most involved. The personal values of altruism, service, and community orientation appear to be the primary determinants of commitment to this type of activity.

There is substantial evidence of the relationship between household income and achievement on the standardized tests often required for college admissions, yet little comparable inquiry considers the essays typically required of applicants to selective U.S. colleges and universities. We used a corpus of 240,000 admission essays submitted by 60,000 applicants to the University of California in November 2016 to measure relationships between the content of admission essays, self-reported household income, and SAT scores. We quantified essay content using correlated topic modeling and essay style using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. We found that essay content and style had stronger correlations to self-reported household income than did SAT scores and that essays explained much of the variance in SAT scores. This analysis shows that essays encode similar information as the SAT and suggests that college admission protocols should attend to how social class is encoded in non-numerical components of applications.

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