In the current context of legal challenges to affirmative action and race-based considerations in college admissions, educators have been challenged to articulate clearly the educational purposes and benefits of diversity. In this article, Patricia Gurin, Eric Dey, Sylvia Hurtado, and Gerald Gurin explore the relationship between students' experiences with diverse peers in the college or university setting and their educational outcomes. Rooted in theories of cognitive development and social psychology, the authors present a framework for understanding how diversity introduces the relational discontinuities critical to identity construction and its subsequent role in fostering cognitive growth. Using both single-and multi-institutional data from the University of Michigan and the Cooperative Institutional Research Program. the authors go on to examine the effects of classroom diversity and informal interaction among African American, Asian American, Latino/a, and White students on learning and democrat} outcomes. The results of their analyses underscore the educational and civic importance of informal interaction among different racial and ethnic groups during the college years. The authors offer their findings as e-•idence of the continuing importance of affirmative action and diversity efforts by colleges and universities, not only as a means of increasing access to higher education for greater numbers of students, but also as a means offostering students' academic and social growth. Educators in L .S. higher education have long argued that affirmative action policies are justified because they ensure the creation of the racially and eth

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The engineering community has recognized the need for a higher retention rate in freshman engineering. If we are to increase the freshman retention rate, we need to better understand the characteristics of academic success for engineering students. One approach is to compare academic performance of engineering students to that of non-engineering students. This study explores the differences in predicting academic success (defined as the first year GPA) for freshman engineering students compared to three non-engineering student sectors (Pre-Med, STEM, and non-STEM disciplines) within a university. Academic success is predicted with pre-college variables from the UCLA/CIRP survey using factor analysis and regression analysis. Except for the factor related to the high school GPA and rank, the predictors for each student sector were discipline specific. Predictors unique to the engineering sector included the factors related to quantitative skills (ACT Math and Science test scores and placement test scores) and confidence in quantitative skills.

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