College freshmen today are more affluent than at any point over the past 35 years, but they say they not very concerned about race relations and are not as prepared for college as they’d like to be, according to a recent report from the University of California, Los Angeles titled “American Freshmen: Forty-Year Trends, 1966-2006.”
Researchers analyzed four decades of data from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program’s Freshman Survey, first launched in 1966. The analysis looked at access and affordability, preparation for college and values, breaking down each category by race/ethnicity and gender.
In 2005, the median annual family income of entering freshmen was $74,000 —60 percent more than the national average family income of $46,236. The gap has widened considerably since 1971, when the median income of families of college freshmen was 46 percent more than the average U.S. family — $13,200 compared to $9,028.
The report also found that among entering college students, just over one-third rated the objective of helping to promote racial understanding as “essential” or “very important.” That represents a decline from a high of 46.4 percent in 1992, when the Rodney King beating trial sparked riots in Los Angeles.
The study also found that students continue to be unprepared for college-level math and science, even though more high school students are college preparatory courses in those subjects.
In 1971, more than half of all American Indians, Blacks and Hispanics said they needed remedial work in mathematics during their college years. Between 1971 and 1979, students’ expectations of needing remedial work in college declined. That trend has since reversed. The overall percentage of college freshmen indicating a need to take remedial math increased from 21.5 percent in 1979 to 24.1 percent in 2005. The percent of freshmen indicating a need to take remedial science rose from 9.7 percent to 10.9 during that same period.
