The
Source of the River: The Social Origins of Freshmen at America’s Selective
Colleges and Universities. Douglas S. Massey, Camille Z. Charles, Garvey
F. Lundy, and Mary J. Fisher. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Pp. 283. $19.95, paper. ISBN: 0-691-12597-X. TEL: 609-258-5714 l FAX: 609-258-1335
Thirty years after deliberate minority recruitment efforts began, we still don’t
know why minority students underperform, or drop out of college. In The Shape
of the River, William Bowen and Derek Bok documented the benefits of affirmative
action for minority students, their communities, and the nation at large. But
they also found that too many failed to achieve academic success.
In this book, Massey and colleagues investigate minority underperformance in
selective colleges and universities. They explain how such factors as neighborhood,
family, peer group, and early schooling influence the academic performance of
students from differing racial and ethnic origins and differing social classes.
Drawing on a major new source of data—the National Longitudinal Survey
of Freshmen—the authors undertake a comprehensive analysis of the diverse
pathways by which whites, African Americans, Latinos, and Asians enter American
higher education. Theirs is the first study to document the different characteristics
that students bring to campus and to trace out the influence of these differences
on later academic performance.
They show: Black and Latino students do not enter college disadvantaged by a
lack of self-esteem. In fact, overconfidence is more common than low self-confidence
among some minority students; minority students are adversely affected by racist
stereotypes of intellectual inferiority; although academic preparation is the
strongest predictor of college performance, shortfalls in academic preparation
are themselves largely a matter of socioeconomic disadvantage and racial segregation.
