Kansas State University Undergraduate Research Conference

Racial Justice in Access to College in Kansas

This research project explores racial justice in the context of access to public universities in Kansas. This research aims to establish if 4-year universities in Kansas achieve two specific criteria, demographic parity and equal opportunity, with respect to enrollment of African Americans. Demographic parity is achieved when the portion of students enrolled in a college who are African American is relatively equivalent to the portion of Kansans who are of ages 18 to 25. Equal Opportunity is satisfied when the portion of students who are in college who are African American is relatively equivalent to the portion of African Americans who are college ready after high school. To do so, we analyzed data from the Kansas Department of Education, Kansas Board of Regents, and United States Census Bureau. We collected this data over a ten-year period; from 2007-2017. While Kansas universities may satisfy the equal opportunity criteria, they fail to satisfy demographic parity. We explore some possible explanations for why this is so, including the effort to recruit students from African American communities. We also examine some ways in which a lack of demographic parity may harm students of color on campus.