Educating multi-ethnic students for life in a multicultural world is one of the greatest challenges facing institutions of higher learning in the 1990s. Community colleges can be justly proud of their tradition as "open door institutions." They strive for both excellence and equity in providing opportunity for students to access higher education. In this decade of diversity, it would be wonderful if these colleges could be equally proud of equity in their faculties. While student populations have grown more diverse, the faculty ranks have remained racially and ethnically static.
Forty-five percent of all minorities in higher education are enrolled in community colleges. In Fall 1990, ethnic minorities comprised 23 percent of all students enrolled at community colleges. African Americans are the largest group, making up 45 percent of total minorities enrolled. Hispanics were 35 percent, AsianPacific Islanders 18 percent, .and American Indians 5 percent (Pluta, 1991; Shantz, 1992). By August 1991 minority student enrollment had increased to 30 percent (Triplett, 1991).
California, the state with the largest number of community colleges, provides the best example of the large proportion of minority students enrolled in these institutions. According to Lisa Lapin (1993), the state's 107 community colleges currently enroll 1.5 million Californians, one-third of whom are from minority groups.
The 176,000 Latino students at California's two-year campuses were more than triple the Latino enrollment at all University of California and California State University campuses combined. Likewise, in New York more than half the City University of New York (CUNY) system consists of minority students.