Diversity and the Influence of Friendship Groups in College

Abstract

As we enter a new millennium, American higher education continues to experience rapid racial and ethnic diversification in the student body. De-mographic projections indicate that increasing ethnic and racial diversity will continue beyond the year 2000 (Justiz, 1994; Levine & Associates, 1989). On some campuses, the pace of demographic change has been nothing short of dramatic. At the University of California, for example, White students1 still represented over 70 % of all undergraduates as late as 1984. Just six years later in 1990, however, the White student proportion had dropped to less than 60 % of all students (University of California, 1991) and only 46% of first-time freshmen (CPEC, 1995). American higher education has also experienced a fair amount of criti-cism and discussion of late, coincident with the increasing racial diversifi-Anthony Lising Antonio is Assistant Professor of Education and Assistant Director of the