SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) Assistant Professor of Sociology, Dr. Byeongdon Oh, and peers from Portland State University recently published research titled, “Shifting Tides: The Evolution of Racial Inequality in Higher Education from the 1980s through the 2010s,” in the academic journal Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World.

The research analyzes four restricted-use national survey datasets to investigate racial disparities in college attendance outcomes from the 1980s through the 2010s. The data showed that college entrance rates increased for all racial groups, but that Black and Hispanic youth became increasingly less likely than their White peers to attend four-year selective colleges. In the 2010s cohort, Black and Hispanic youth were eight and seven percentage points, respectively, less likely than their White counterparts to secure admission to four-year selective colleges, even after controlling for parents’ income, education, and other family background variables. Dr. Oh notes that the findings underscore the urgent need for proactive policy interventions to address the widening racial inequality in attending selective postsecondary institutions.

The group’s research follows the June 29, 2023 affirmative action decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which dismantled race-conscious college admission policies that have intensified concerns about the persistence and potential increase of racial inequality in higher education. Dr. Oh, who recently joined SUNY Poly after completing a postdoctoral program at the University of California, Berkeley, plans to extend his research to examine the evolution of race, class, and gender inequality in higher education, including the data from the 2020s.

To read the group’s open-access research paper, in which Dr. Oh served as lead author, click here.