Elsewhere in this report, we document racial disparities in the workplace. Minorities don’t get as many jobs in certain industries and occupational groups as we would expect, based on their share of the population or of the workforce. More particularly, they don’t get as many jobs in management and the professions, which tend to be the best-paying jobs. Here we can show that the disparities also exist in the educational pipeline. Simply put, there aren’t enough minority students preparing for the best jobs.

Source: Indianapolis Private Industry Council computation from data from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, Student Information System, 2006

The values in the table are drawn from a database provided by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education. It counts all students from the nine Central Indiana counties who are enrolled in any of the state’s public higher education institutions. The table counts students in the fourth year of a relevant program. These are not complete totals for the programs, since only Central Indiana students are considered here. Also, they are not complete counts of Central Indiana college participation, since thousands more are enrolled in other institutions and other areas of study. The numbers are offered here only as a sample showing proportions.

White women appear to be receiving 72.4 percent of all degrees in the health sciences and biomedical fields. This is remarkable, given that they are only 37 percent of the labor force. The largest bachelor’s degree occupation in the health field is nursing, traditionally viewed as a woman’s occupation, and this explains why women tally so many more spots than men.

Minorities’ numbers are small – even smaller than we should expect. Blacks are about 14.8 percent of the Central Indiana region’s population. They are only 8.1 percent of the fourth-year health career students. In education, blacks account for only 6.9 percent of all fourth-year students, while white women take up 62.6 percent.⁸

These few examples show that employment disparities in specific occupations and industries can be traced to education and career preparation. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions tells us that discrimination exists, but the evident disparities are not caused only by employers’ discriminatory practices. Even if every local minority candidate for these occupations were hired, there still would be fewer of them than their share of the community’s population.

Nor is it our intent to point a finger at the colleges and universities. They may be fair in who they accept and how they teach. The differing outcomes, including minority underrepresentation in higher education, that we observe in so many places, from occupational participation to educational attainment to incomes, may be shaped very early in life.

8 Summing the four numbers across each line in the chart will not give you the total number of students. Other ethnicities are enrolled, but not included in the chart because they are small.