It is a powerful image: the slow, steady pan of the camera as the picture of young African American faces come into view, their eyes hopeful, focused on a crossroad, asking for our help. Then the message: "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."
This advertising slogan from the United Negro College Fund has become as much a part of the national landscape as the nationwide effort to increase the number of minorities graduating from our colleges and universities. So much attention has been devoted in recent years to promoting diversity in higher education not because we are soft-hearted, but because we are hardheaded; not because we harbor a sentimental disposition to do "something" for those who have been historically disadvantaged, but because we have made a realistic appraisal of the opportunities that will be lost to the nation if we do not bring the ever-growing minority population into the higher education community, both as students and as faculty.
This transformation in emphasis lies along the fault of converging economic and demographic trends. By the year 2000 it is estimated that 75 percent of all workers will be in jobs requiring mental, rather than physical, exertion (Workforce 2000, Executive Sumrnaty, 1991). The greatest growth will be for workers in professional and technical occupations such as management, information processing, health care, and law. In Massachusetts alone, state labor force stuhes estimate that 80 percent of the new jobs will require postsecondary education and 33 percent will require four years of college. By contrast, just eight years ago 22 percent of all jobs in the state required a bachelor's degree.
To be competitive in the new global market, workers will need more higher order skills than they currently possess. These new workers will require NEW DlRECnONS FOR COMMUNlrY COUEGES. no. 87. Fall 1994 0 Jossey-Bass Publishers