The nation must move quickly to eliminate gaps between members of minority groups and the rest of the population in education, employment, health, and other areas, the head of a commission on minority opportunity told the House Education and Labor Committee last week.
“America is moving backward, not forward, in its efforts to achieve the full participation of minority citizens in the life and prosperity of the nation,” said Frank H. T. Rhodes, president of Cornell University and chairman of the Commission on Minority Participation in Education and American Life.
The panel was created by the American Council on Education and the Education Commission of the States last January to focus public attention on the need to expand minority participation in higher education and other sectors of society.
In a May report, the commission called on colleges to increase minority enrollments and on public officials to improve the economic condition of members of minority groups. (See Education Week, June 1, 1988.)
The Education and Labor hearing was designed to draw further attention to the findings of the report, entitled “One Third of a Nation.”
Robert H. Atwell, president of the American Council on Education, said the a.c.e. planned to issue a handbook for colleges and universities “outlining successful practices and programs for increasing minority participation.”
