The presentation of these statistics is misleading and reads like a common case of "find some numbers to support this great narrative I want to write." Comparing total college-age population with final enrollment assumes that all groups apply to these universities in equal proportion, and that all races/cultures hold the same assumptions about the value of a university education for prosperity/success/happiness. The narrative seems to suggest that university is the primary means to wealth and advancement, thus if blacks and Hispanics are under-represented, they are necessarily disproportionately under-privileged.
If the goal is to evaluate possible university-driven under-representation, an honest statistic would be comparing application rates to acceptance rates per race. Or if the objective is measuring social mobility, examining the percentage of college-age persons attending technical schools, working as skilled labor, earning a certain percentage above the poverty line (or a reasonable percentage of median household income), or attending university, would reveal differing career choices while also showing which percentage of each race falls outside of a normal path to upward mobility.
Maybe I am cynical, but I think white over-representation has more to do with economic disparity, which results in cultural disparity between rungs of the economic ladder, such that upper-middle class society (within which whites are over-represented) overvalues university as the de facto path to prosperity and success. But even among whites, there are still a lot of first-generation university students. This is not driven by race, but by socioeconomics - parents who worked blue collar jobs without an education, earned their way into middle/upper-middle class circles, which then inculcated either their children, them, or both with the expectation of university attendance. Measuring those realities, their causes and effects, is where real solutions to these disparities will be sought.
> Comparing total college-age population with final enrollment assumes that all groups apply to these universities in equal proportion, and that all races/cultures hold the same assumptions about the value of a university education for prosperity/success/happiness.
No, it doesn't. It simply measures underrepresentation. Variations on those axes aren't assumed away, because while those may explain some or all of the underrepresentation (at least, intermediate mechanisms, if not root causes), they do not negate it's existence.
> Maybe I am cynical, but I think white over-representation has more to do with economic disparity, which results in cultural disparity between rungs of the economic ladder
In terms of race issues, that's exactly the polar opposite of cynicism, and well into pollyannaism.
Sorry, I think in editing I deleted my intermediate sentence. You are right, it measures under-representation, but the narrative and assumption is that under-representation in university is problematic, worrisome, an issue. I think that assumption is false, and assuming that under-representation is an issue that can be fixed, or should be fixed, relies on assuming that there is some cause that does not originate with the individual. If individuals simply do not choose to attend university, then that is not a problem that should be forcefully fixed. If instead individuals from each race equally desire and apply to university, and still under-representation exists, then measuring it is useful. But in that case measuring application to acceptance is more accurate.
> but the narrative and assumption is that under-representation in university is problematic, worrisome, an issue
Sure, but even if the mechanisms you suggest are assumed away (they aren't) are part of the mechanism of underrepresentation, it would still be all those things. In fact, I would see increasing racial divergence in either the perceived value of college or the rate of application independent of the perceived value of college and extremely worrying signs.
But, really, before people accept the value of explaining the trend toward increasing black/hispanic underrepresentation, they need to understand that the exists; in case you haven't noticed, there is a very powerful (if entirely non-factual) narrative exact opposite is the case, driven by an increasingly powerful political faction, including the leadership of the executive branch of the US government.
If the goal is to evaluate possible university-driven under-representation, an honest statistic would be comparing application rates to acceptance rates per race. Or if the objective is measuring social mobility, examining the percentage of college-age persons attending technical schools, working as skilled labor, earning a certain percentage above the poverty line (or a reasonable percentage of median household income), or attending university, would reveal differing career choices while also showing which percentage of each race falls outside of a normal path to upward mobility.
Maybe I am cynical, but I think white over-representation has more to do with economic disparity, which results in cultural disparity between rungs of the economic ladder, such that upper-middle class society (within which whites are over-represented) overvalues university as the de facto path to prosperity and success. But even among whites, there are still a lot of first-generation university students. This is not driven by race, but by socioeconomics - parents who worked blue collar jobs without an education, earned their way into middle/upper-middle class circles, which then inculcated either their children, them, or both with the expectation of university attendance. Measuring those realities, their causes and effects, is where real solutions to these disparities will be sought.