@cafe9999 said
“I did a quick look and as a public school Clemson does a poor job of representing its state’s large African American population.”
What exactly does this statement mean? Are you implying that Clemson does not admit African American students ? The percentage of African American students is 27% .
It means if 40% of SC is African American, Clemson doesn’t have 40% AA.
@twoinanddone SC has 27% African American population and no school has 100% representation of a minority population for a state. That’s also assuming that a large number of the AA population applies to Clemson.
Out of SC public universities, USC Aiken, USC Upstate, and Winthrop appear to have racial/ethnic demographics similar to the state of SC, although the state demographics may not be the same as the demographics of college-age people in the state. SC State, Francis Marion, and Lander have a higher percentage of black students, but lower percentage of Latino students, relative to the state of SC.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/SC
https://www.collegedata.com/cs/search/college/college_search_tmpl.jhtml
According to college board, Clemson reports:
0.2% American Indian/Alaskan Native
2.5% Asian
6.9% Black/African-American
3.5% Hispanic/Latino
2.8% Multi-race (not Hispanic/Latino)
0.0% Native Hawaiian/ Pacific Islander
83.7% White
0.5% Unknown
Less than 7% representation in a state that is 27% black is not a good representation. I think that’s all cafe9999 meant, that it seems less diverse than you’d think looking at the state diversity numbers.
We found this when looking at a lot of schools. I thought there would be more minorities at the public schools in our state, but there weren’t. My daughter goes to a private school with a lot more diversity than the public schools in Florida.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/SC says that SC’s population is 27.5% black as of July 1, 2016. However, demographics of college age people may different from that of the overall population.
@ucbalumnus SC State is a HBCU .
Back to the OP - My dd is from Northeast Pennsylvania suburbia, a socially liberal but economically conservative area. She went to Alabama and is thriving. She went with an open mind and an understanding that she was going to meet all different people. Her best friends and sorority sisters are from all over the US although there are many from Alabama and other neighboring states. I just asked her what she thought about your question and she said “people are people. There are mean people and kind people everywhere. If you are confident in yourself and open to meet others than you should have no problem going anywhere, you will find your people and learn a lot about yourself in the process.”
The most pronounced difference that she has noticed is surrounding religion. She feels that people are much more open and vocal about their religous beliefs than she is used to in our home area. She said it is difficult to describe but church is a big thing in a very different public way then around here. She feels that church is about social status and for show and public in Alabama where in our area it is much more private and more live and let live. She did not know or really care where or even if many of her HS peers went to church but at Alabama it is a social thing.
We have another child taking part in the college search now and we have paid attention to the ratio of in state to out of state students at schools he is looking at. We would be hesistant to send him far away to a school that is not geographically diverse.
@twoinanddone and @ucbalumnus Yes, thank you, those were the figures I had looked at. Clemson even has a slightly higher percentage of white students than UVM and UNH, two states with few minority residents. Out of curiosity I just checked University of Mississippi and its general pop. is 37.7% black per the census quickfacts website @ucbalumnus mentions, and 13% black student body per CB. Even if the figures aren’t exact because of college age demographics it is an eye opener, and I would want to know why a public university isn’t enrolling a fair representation of its residents, and what they were doing about it.
As a comparison, two southwest public universities University of New Mexico and University of Arizona have similar figures between its resident population and public university students:
NM: census 38.1% white non-hispanic; 48.5% hispanic
UNM: 35% white; 46% hispanic (per CB)
AZ: census 55.5% white non-hispanic; 30.9% hispanic
UAZ: 51% white non-hispanic; 26% hispanic
@cafe9999 Did you look at the number of African American instate students that applied to Clemson ?
@twoinanddone I’m not surprised that a private school may have a more diverse population than a public school. Many private schools have the ability to award higher scholarships than publics.
Re: #89
Where would such numbers be found?
Although Clemson may be able to market itself better to African American students if its honors college were not named after John Calhoun, who was a prominent proponent of slavery as a “positive good”.
Her school is an engineering school and has a lot of foreign students who add diversity. The school doesn’t give enough in scholarships to cover the difference (about $40k difference from public COA). My daughter was really looking for a school where her race wouldn’t be an issue and I think she found one. When I’ve been on campus, I just don’t notice all the different races or ethnic groups. They just all look like college students to me.
Many states in the south have HBCU which pull the black students from other public schools, so the numbers get skewed to more whites at the flagships than the state racial make up would support. FSU has 32k students, but only 8% are black. However, FAMU has 8k students and 90% are black. The two schools share many facilities, and there is also a community college sharing too, so the number of black students in the area is a lot higher than FSU’s 8%.
FSU and FAMU most famously share their engineering division. Oddly, most of the engineering enrollment comes through FSU, even though FAMU costs less and offers better scholarships (an obvious arbitrage situation for the same engineering education).