<p>This year marks the first entering class at Wesleyan to matriculate under the newly revised federal guidelines for collecting statistical data on race and the results are interesting. By merely asking matriculants to choose between self-identifying as either African-American or "multi-racial" -- but, not both -- the percentage of the Class of 2014 that are black non-Hispanics (or who don't live abroad) declines from 9% to 6.8% or a decline of 25%: <a href="http://www.wesleyan.edu/ir/cds/cds2010-11.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.wesleyan.edu/ir/cds/cds2010-11.pdf</a> [p.4]</p>
<p>At Swarthmore, the decline is even more dramatic; the percentage of black members of the Class of 2014 declined from a total 43 to 22, or by an astonishing 50%, using the new formula: <a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/ir/EnrSum2010.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/ir/EnrSum2010.pdf</a> [Note: you have to toggle between pages 1 and 2 to compare the two formulas]</p>
<p>Kudos to the folk at Ephblog for the interesting thread: African-American</a> Enrollment Declines by 1/3 at Swarthmore : EphBlog</p>