No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life by

Thomas J. Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford

No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life
by Thomas J. Espenshade; Alexandria Walton Radford
Review by: Scott Davies
American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 117, No. 1 (July 2011), pp. 325-327
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/661519 .
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Book Reviews
325
the present political environment, of course, but they do bring focus to
some of the issues most likely to confound discussion about race in many
venues, college classrooms included, where certain ways of thinking about
race have become thoroughly naturalized. Taken out of the context in
which she presents them, Pollocks ideas provide another tool to help
make the case that reducing racism to bad people with bad attitudes
engaging in discreet discriminatory acts is only one way to approach the
question, and a way that may obscure more than it illuminates.
Because of Race deepens a scholarly discourse that stresses the tensions
between what appears to be national consensus in favor of racial equality,
on the one hand, and a widespread lack of support for specic policies
and practices that would actually promote it, on the other. Sociologists
will nd much that recalls the work of Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (Racism
without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial In-
equality in the United States [Rowman & Littleeld, 2003]) or David
Wellman (Portraits of White Racism [Cambridge University Press, 1977]).
But Pollock is focused specically on how certain common racial discur-
sive frames, to use Bonilla-Silvas language, intrude themselves into the
practice of an important federal agency. It might be argued that some of
the neologisms hereeveryday justice, new civil rights eraare of ques-
tionable utility or clarity and that some cases are rendered in more detail
than most readers are likely to need. That said, Pollock has produced an
unusually thorough description of the routinization of a moral imperative,
an interesting case study of the street-level implementation of policy and
an exacting and instructive microcosm of larger discourses about race and
equity.
No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College
Admission and Campus Life. By Thomas J. Espenshade and Alexandria
Walton Radford. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009. Pp.
xviii547. $35.00.
Scott Davies
McMaster University
The conviction that credentials from top colleges are crucial for success
has spread throughout popular American society. Families are devising
ever-more elaborate tactics as they vie for coveted spots in the upper
echelons of higher education. Ivy League universities are reporting record
numbers of applicants. Research shows these colleges boost students
chances of entering lucrative professions, high-income jobs, and leading
corporate and political positions. All of this pressure is triggering a re-
naissance in the study of elite education in American sociology. The social
composition, habits, strategies, and fortunes of Americas most exclusive
students are receiving renewed scholarly attention. To this expanding
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American Journal of Sociology
326
literature, Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Radford contribute No
Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal, a rigorous statistical portrait of students
at upper-tier universities, with a focus on underrepresented minorities. In
a context of intensied competition and mounting political opposition to
afrmative action, they ponder whether elite higher education can be an
engine of social mobility, or whether it instead serves as a reproductive
insurance company for the already privileged. And since selective colleges
have taken deliberate steps to diversify their student bodies and reduce
the physical separation of whites and minorities, they also examine the
social experiences of minorities on elite campuses.
To address these issues, Espenshade and Radford analyze the National
Study of College Experience (NSCE), which pooled data on hundreds of
thousands of students who applied to 10 selective colleges between the
early 1980s and late 1990s, with surveys collected from more than 9,000
students. In 500 pages and 135 tables and gures, they exhaustively ex-
amine race and class correlates of student admissions, acceptances, ex-
periences, and outcomes. Their coverage is unusually thorough and de-
tailed, devoted to substantiating major empirical patterns rather than to
more interpretative issues. Over 10 chapters, they map a vast statistical
terrain that cannot be fully summarized in a short review. Below are some
highlights.
The authors nd that applicants to selective colleges not only have
impressive academic proles, but also engage in the sorts of extracurric-
ular activities favored by admissions ofcers. But while this applicant
pool is certainly meritorious, it is also socially privileged, marked by high
family incomes and attendance at private high schools. And it is stratied
by race. White applicants are the most afuent, followed by Asians, blacks,
and Hispanics. The latter two minorities are underrepresented in the
applicant pool compared to their proportion of the U.S. population, as
are students from middle- to low-income groups. They nd that Asian
Americans have the most competitive applications, while blacks have the
most modest academic proles. Within this terrain, the authors examine
whether afrmative action policies boost the admission chances of un-
derrepresented minorities. They nd that these policies indeed improve
the odds for African-American and Hispanic applicants, as indicated by
their higher acceptance rates compared to other groups. But these equal-
izing policies do not alter a stark nding: a rising share of students at
NCSE institutions is coming from upper-middle-class and upper-class
families, particularly in the very most selective colleges. Various policies
may have improved the odds of admission for underrepresented minor-
ities, but afuent students have become most adept at competing for high-
stakes admissions, and continue to form a majority on elite campuses.
Another focus of the book is on the social benets of diversity and race-
sensitive admissions. Espenshade and Radford examine survey data on
student interactions across racial and ethnic lines. They nd a half-full
glass. A majority of students reported friendships with members of other
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Book Reviews
327
groups, and this pattern increased from the 1980s to the 1990s. Many
reported having learned from these experiences. But the authors also
found the glass to be half empty. Most socializing still occurred within
same-race groups, with whites being the most racially isolated. Further,
blacks reported the lowest satisfaction levels with their college experience,
though their absolute level was fairly high. Some campus policies mod-
erated these patterns, but not all students chose to seize opportunities to
mix across racial lines. The authors take a key message from these data:
campus administrators need to be proactive and purposively forge op-
portunities for cross race mingling.
Perhaps the authors prime concern is to assess the impact of afrmative
action on graduation. Critics have opposed race-sensitive admissions to
highly selective colleges by contending that they actually serve to lower
minority graduation rates. These critics claim that many underprepared
students are overwhelmed by high-level academic competitions in the top
schools, and eventually drop out. Espenshade and Radford nd no em-
pirical support for this mismatch hypothesis, however. African-Ameri-
cans and Hispanics may be less likely to graduate than whites and Asians,
but selective colleges actually boost minority completion rates. The au-
thors see a trade-off: afrmative action raises minority completion rates
at the expense of lowered class ranks. But the benets outweigh the
drawbacks, they emphasize, since elite credentials confer many life ad-
vantages, regardless of class rank. Building on this idea, they conclude
that race-sensitive admissions generate more campus diversity and ad-
vantages for minorities than would a race-blind process, and they do not
see any viable short-term alternative to these policies. But noting oppo-
sition to afrmative action, they also warn that any long-termpreservation
of minority representation on elite campuses will require raising levels of
minority achievement and narrowing achievement gaps.
After summarizing their vast array of empirical ndings, the authors
offer a sobering verdict: elite campuses do indeed serve to reproduce
inequality. Minorities are now less separate than before in the upper tiers
of American higher education, but they are not yet equal. In a spirited
concluding chapter, the authors declare a war on the racial gap in ac-
ademic performance and hail their American Competitiveness and
Leadership Project, a blueprint for research and reform on a Manhattan
Project scale. This mammoth initiative would have interdisciplinary teams
of researchers monitor a large, national sample of children from birth to
age 18, use the data to identify sources of racial gaps in achievement, and
develop a series of compensating measures to be taken by parents, schools,
and neighborhoods. Certainly this book provides ample ammunition for
such an ambitious project. The authors are to be commended for the
clarity, lucidity, and comprehensiveness in which they have pursued their
agenda. Maybe this book will soon spawn their planned project. In the
meantime, any sociologist interested in upper-tier universities should con-
sult it as a most authoritative source.
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