Adrianna Kezar in The Christian Science Monitor: Planning for a post-Millennial future

Pullias co-director Adrianna Kezar was quoted in The Christian Science Monitor about how colleges can adapt to a more diverse, “post-millennial” student population on campuses:

School pride is strong on the suburban campus of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County – and not just because of a history-making basketball upset last year.

UMBC, and its president, Freeman Hrabowski, have earned national recognition for their commitment to racial diversity and the high number of masters and doctoral graduates of color here. The school produces more black graduates with a combined MD-PhD than anywhere else in the country.

UMBC is one of a few campuses that have prioritized student diversity as a core value, says Adrianna Kezar, professor of higher education at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. And that distinction may carry more weight as racial diversity rises in the United States.

A new report from Pew Research Center shows that the “post-Millennial” generation, currently between the ages of 6 and 22, is the most racially diverse ever. Its oldest members are also enrolling in college at the highest rates in history. The shift spotlights the changing values of a college degree across diverse communities in the US – and raises pressing questions for how colleges can accommodate their transforming student bodies.

“Everything that we do at the center of the institution needs to be rethought,” says Professor Kezar. “If the new demographics of the students are wholly different and the majority of our students are not like those we’ve had in the past, how do we relook at the primary functions that we have so that they have support?”

Read the full article at The Christian Science Monitor. Kezar is the author of How Colleges Change: Understanding, Leading, and Enacting Change (Routledge) and “Speaking Truth and Acting with Integrity: Confronting Challenges of Campus Racial Climate.”