I visited Tulane this past weekend as part of the Scholar’s Program and while I
liked the school, I am pretty shocked on how little diversity there is. Given it’s profile, I guess I expected it to be diverse. It may be the whitest school I’ve visited.
57.6% female, 42.4% male. 71.4% white, 9% black. This is from http://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/tulane-university-of-louisiana/student-life/diversity/. Your observation seems correct. Also see https://colleges.niche.com/tulane-university/diversity/.
If diversity is something that is important in a school for you, I would strongly suggest looking into schools which have more diversity. I was actually strongly considering Tulane and seeing these stats kind of turns me off from it. I personally think that having students from all walks of life and with diverse cultural beliefs creates school.
Define “little diversity”.
Tulane is 71% white non-Hispanic. The US population is 72% white non-Hispanic.
I guess living in the US must turn you off.
It is true that Tulane mirrors the US population when it comes to white students %. But I would point out two things. First, Tulane has an equal or greater African American population than most of the similar schools it would normally compete against for students. Above someone said Tulane is 9%. Using the numbers from the Common Data Set of other schools: Miami=7.4%, USC=4.4%, Vanderbilt=8.1%, Rice=6.7%. Then there are those bastions of liberalism, the LAC’s of the Northeast and the Pacific Northwest. Williams=7.1%, Amherst=11.7%, Reed=1.8%(!!) And finally from the Midwest Oberlin, also famously liberal, 5.2%. I would also point out that Oberlin is 70% white. So as far as black students are concerned, only Amherst is more represented than Tulane. I am sure there are others, of course. But again, these are schools Tulane is frequently compared to for applicants. Oh, another I thought of, Wake Forest. Interesting because they are test optional, and people complain that the standardized tests are biased against blacks. 6.5%
So you will excuse me if I am struggling to see where the criticism is coming from. Not that I am saying Tulane cannot do more. They can and the new President, Mike Fitts, has stated several times that he is committed to this for both the student body and faculty. He has only been in office for one year. But I would submit that the previous administration did a lot as well. Tulane forged strong relationships with the Posse Foundation, first their Los Angeles branch and now the local NOLA branch as well. This has been a success and the school is looking into more ways to reach out.
The school especially has fewer of two groups than some others, Hispanics and Asians. Now clearly overall Asians are not an underrepresented minority compared to their percentage of the US population. But possibly due to not being as well known for some STEM fields as some other schools, or its ranking in the 50’s until this year when it jumped to 41, perhaps Tulane doesn’t attract the number of Asian students some other schools do. I don’t mean this to sound like a gross generalization or any kind of ethnic characterization. It is simply a factual statement of known demographics. The Hispanic representation I can only possibly explain in terms of local population differences, but that is rather unsatisfying. I don’t know what the issues might be there.
Having said all that, I would challenge you both to think about diversity a bit more broadly. For example, are you sure the numbers are truly telling you anything about diversity? How do you know if the people of color at other schools were really raised in an environment all that different from a typical middle to upper-middle class white family, and of course even a wealthy one? This is not intended to take the thread into a discussion if a black or Asian person’s experiences are different in any way no matter their economic status. Of course they are at times, but I think it is fair to say the “diversity” factor as it is frequently tossed about is not the same as when we are talking about students that were in fact brought up in less favorable circumstances. Such as the students in the Posse Foundation program. Not to forget, of course, that not all white kids are brought up in the lap of luxury either. Which is all to say diversity is much more than skin deep.
Finally, I would also ask you to think about what experiencing diversity in the classroom means as compared to living it on a regular basis. Both are important of course, but I would say that few undergraduate schools in this country interact with the wide variety of people on a regular basis as Tulane does. Not only the various demographic groups of New Orleans, but throughout Southeastern Louisiana, so that includes Cajun, Creole, and Native Americans in greater percentages than you find in the city. At Tulane, undergraduates are required to take two semester long service courses, and because it is in the DNA of so many Tulane students, or becomes part of it for others, many keep on connecting beyond the requirements. No major school is as fundamentally tied to its city and region as Tulane is to NOLA and Southern Louisiana.
Which experience do you think will teach you more about diversity, sitting around talking about it (which is valuable, don’t get me wrong) or combining that with doing something with it all at the most basic and important way? If you want to, of course. If you don’t, you can skate by doing the minimum and brag to your friends how many different ethnic groups are represented at your school and how much protesting you did with them. Or you can go out and help the homeless learn to create jobs and skills for themselves, and write about it so more will get involved, as my daughter did. Which she was told, btw, differentiated her from tens of thousands of other applicants when she got her internships at the US Dept. of State, one summer in DC and one in Taipei, Taiwan working on American outreach programs. Heck, maybe your contributions could be helping Tulane in their strategies to become more diverse. Maybe something worth thinking about.
I think it’s shocking that Stanford, in the state of California that is ~40% hispanic, has only 11% hispanic students. How’s that for diversity?
Yes, although I don’t want to take that too far. While it is true that all private “national” research universities reflect a higher percentage of students from within a moderately local area, I think they are indeed national enough that comparing their demographic profile to the state demographic profile is not really fair. I did underline private for a reason.
Didn’t mean to imply that Stanford should also be 40% hispanic. But considering that the US is over 17% hispanic, it’s a failing that Stanford can’t do better with its huge pool to draw from. So why single out Tulane?
Right. Just thought that should be clarified to that point.
Also @atp1234 you likely know this already but that female to male ratio is extremely close to the national average of the rate females are entering college as compared to males. By the time they should have graduated (no more than 6 years), the gap is even bigger, meaning obviously that males drop out at a higher rate as well.
@fallenchemist I appreciate your advice and analysis of this matter. You’ve changed my view for the better! 
re male/female ratio: if tulane is wanting to be compared to more prestigious schools, comparing to the national average is not a good strategy. they should compare to their peers
re racial: from what i’ve seen shools that are over 70% white all have the homogeneous feel to them. The main differentiator would be percent of internationals. schools that have 10% or more internationals will seem much more diverse, even if their white count is high. Tulane is at ~3% which should improve if they want to compare well with their peers. It may be that they simply don’t have a strategy for pushing higher intl enrollment for some reason.
re socio: the % pell grants tells a lot here. in terms of who attends and also who the college is trying to attract. schools that are pushing 20% here are obviously seeking socioeconomic diversity (Miami, USC and Rice do well here, the others lag by comparison).
Here are numbers for a few of the schools FC mentioned:
school men/women% intl% pell%
Tulane 42/58 3.0% 10%
Miami 49/51 14.3% 18%
USC 50/50 12.6% 18%
Vanderbilt 50/50 5.9% 13%
Rice 51/49 12.2% 19%
WUSTL 49/51 8.3% 5%
I understand the chart above, but again I caution in assuming the numbers reflect some sort of either A or B reality. As far as Pell, as I understand it when a school participates in the Posse Foundation they provide full tuition scholarships, which can eliminate the need for a Pell. From the Posse web site:
I am not sure but I think that in some cases of extreme need Tulane is paying for everything. And Tulane has two full contingents of Posse Scholars, Los Angeles and New Orleans. So I think it is more than fair to say that one would add those numbers, whatever they are, to the number of Pell recipients to get a truer number. And I am not sure that Tulane isn’t in another, similar program to attract this kind of student. I seem to remember reading about it but cannot remember the name. But forget that, say that is wrong. It is still a significant addition to the Pell numbers since Tulane is a relatively small school.
As far as international, I think it is pretty well established that many school are not need blind when it comes to international students. So while they might add one kind of diversity, they may not add another at all. And being on CC for a long time, it is a common observation that students from certain areas of the world tend to cluster at their new school and not interact so much. Naturally this has variable amounts of validity, and my point isn’t to generalize that having international students doesn’t add to diversity, but that citing numbers doesn’t always tell the whole story, or even most of it. Having said that, Tulane did not strive to enroll international students in a big way until just a few years ago. They more than doubled international enrollment this year, I want to say from something like 23 to 52. It is close enough that I am not going to dig up the CDS. Tulane has full tuition scholarships for about 10 international students, and does offer aid. So I am not sure how much they are using the increase in internationals to beef up income. I am sure that plays some role.
Finally, for the men/women. Fair enough to compare to those same schools. I can’t explain it with reasonable certainty, but I can hypothesize. First, Tulane does have a reputation for being very strong in the humanities, and they have continued to support these departments very strongly. I think it is still true that the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane is second to the business school in size, as opposed to the School of Science and Engineering, which I assume is third. It is also well established that despite gains in gender parity, the Liberal Arts still skew female. So that might explain part of it. The other reason could be the amount of control admissions has over this. Here is what I mean. Schools like Harvard, Stanford and Yale have such high yields that they can pretty easily control the gender balance of the incoming classes. As one moves down the list in yield, this control lessens. Tulane, because of the somewhat different way they do admissions and where they are in the preference order compared to these most highly selective schools, has much less control over this. If they tried to control it this way, they might put either the quality of the class at risk, or the final size of the class, or even both. So that might explain why the ratio reflects the national average.
I think the numbers speak for themselves. And subjectively, I don’t think anyone would say Tulane is very diverse.
As for Posse, looks great, but it’s tiny - only 10-20 kids a class (less than 1% of all students). And from the little looking around I just did, it’s only for full tuition, not including room and board. Pell would still be needed, so I’m sure these students are included in the Pell stats.
Pell is low partly due to the values of the school. It doesn’t matter that Tulane is need blind since they don’t meet full need. And in the cases that they do meet full need (and I speak from experience with my own d), they fill the package with loans and work study - much more than the typical 7500 total in loans). By doing this they reduce the number of pell eligible students that end up deciding to come to Tulane - because it’s simply not affordable. Projected 40,000+ in loans is just too much.
End result - low diversity.
I am not saying Tulane cannot and/or should not improve diversity. But I strongly disagree with the statement that the numbers speak for themselves. I find that is rarely the case. What’s that old saying? Lies, damn lies, and statistics? Of course while funny, it is an exaggeration, but does speak to the fact that one often has to be very careful that the numbers are capturing the entire story. Speaking of not telling the whole story, where is the discussion regarding LGBTQ issues in all of this. I think one has to admit that keeping up with all the issues of what constitutes diversity is no easy task. Of course the easiest thing to do to appease perceptions is just to pass the “eye test” for visitors. Still I have to say, 20 kids a class for Posse would be more than 1%, which is significant since we are dealing with single digit percentages to begin with. I don’t know that is right about Pell Grants to each of them, it might be or might not.
Average loan amount for Tulane students on graduation is right around $30,000 last number I saw, so maybe now it is slightly higher like $32,000. But not $40,000. If I am reading the CDS right it looks $32,000 is about right, but I am finding it a bit confusing. But I saw a report on this 3 years ago and it was $28,000 and then last year a similar table to an article quoted it as just over $30,000. So essentially we are talking about maximizing Federal loans, on average. Tulane meets 95% of need on average.
We can argue stats until the end of time. I go back to my statement earlier that if the point of diversity is to expose students to a different reality than what they have been brought up perceiving, then Tulane does that at least as well as any school in the country. There are more ways to do that than increasing the percentage of people of color, LGBTQ people, and those of lower economic circumstances that are students. Again, I do think that is important and I hope President Fitts can lead the way to making that happen. But it doesn’t come close to telling the whole story, in Tulane’s case at least.
While you might not see the diversity at Tulane when you walk around the campus. Is diversity simply a matter of skin color? Tulane is diverse in a different way-- the large cross section of students from all around the country. As they point out, Tulane’s student body is from across the country and world, the average student traveling 900 miles.
Well at least you acknowledge that they can perhaps improve their diversity. My biggest point of discontent with Tulane is their financial unfriendliness to low income folks. Obviously many families love them because they are generous with merit aid, and I think it’s great that Tulane is an excellent merit option for folks. But meeting 95% of need is falling pretty far short in the land of FA. Also, even 100%-need-met schools vary hugely in their financial friendliness. Some are ‘no loan’, some use a few loans, and some double up on loans (as Tulane did in adding an additional perkins that was almost half of the total loan amount). Net price variance from the extremely friendly likes of Princeton and Penn to other 100% schools can easily be 8-10k, or even more if the school looks hard at home equity.
i’m simply stating my opinion, which is based on the facts we’ve been talking about: Tulane is not particularly financially friendly in terms of meeting need, and that results in fewer low income people in attendance.
Now, all that being said, I don’t necessarily think Tulane is doing it wrong. They rely heavily on merit for a reason - to attract people that would alternatively choose Ivies or other elite schools. Not necessarily low income folks. Low income folks can go to the elite schools no problem, so they won’t likely be lured away by merit, even full tuition scholarships.
As for my d, she may in fact decide on Tulane. We’ll just have to wait and see. The reality is that they’re not THAT far behind the other schools, so it would be doable if she ends up loving it. And SHE has no problem with diversity there - I’m the cranky one that cares about FA :-).
@lz57c4 wrote
Subjectively? Subjectively??? What the heck does this even mean? It’s already been pointed out that OBJECTIVELY Tulanes’s demographics are roughly reflective of the US population, and in line with the demographic profile of other selective schools.
You keep batting around the phrase “low diversity”, and I’ve already asked you once before to define what this means. So what does it mean?
And NEWS FLASH: most schools cannot meet full need, because most schools don’t have 11-figure endowments.
Endowment size:
Princeton: $22b
UPenn: $11b
Tulane: $1b
It’s just a serious but friendly discussion with good points being made by all. I don’t see this as people having “sides”, but pointing out the lens through which they see the diversity issue. And not surprisingly, to me at least, it makes it pretty clear how difficult the issue is, both to define and resolve. Even with a consensus definition, fixing it is very very tough.
My son is a Junior at Tulane and I remember feeling the same way when we attended Destination Tulane. His New England boarding school seemed more diverse! At that point, he had already enrolled, etc. and I’m not sure that would have changed his mind, but it was definitely an eye opener. While Tulane isn’t as diverse as we had expected, New Orleans itself is a very diverse city. On campus, my son has involved himself with various multicultural student groups as well. The Tulane Black Student Union has been an invaluable resource for him.
It would aid the discussion to know the breakdown of the application pool. A school cannot admit minority students that do not apply.