What people say about Color and Money-

"Anyone interested in the inequities of the selective college admissions process will find Color and Money clear-eyed, hard-hitting, enlightening, and informative."--Rachel Toor, author of Admissions Confidential: An Insider's Account of the Elite College Selection Process.
"For those concerned about why the march toward social justice in America has faltered badly for nearly forty years, Peter Schmidt's Color and Money is a highly instructive--and greatly disturbing--guidepost." --Richard Kluger, author of Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality.
"An indispensible guide to the debate over affirmative action in the United States."--Michael Lind, author of The Next American Nation.
"This book is a must read for anyone concerned with access to higher education, especially to the nation’s elite universities, as well as with larger questions of social policy and social justice."--Terry MacTaggart, Former Chancellor, University of Maine System
"Books on the highly-charged issue of affirmative action are usually one-sided and inflammatory. Peter Schmidt's Color and Money is a wonderful exception. It provides an honest and fair examination that is also passionate and illuminating."--Richard D. Kahlenberg, Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation, and author of The Remedy: Class, Race, and Affirmative Action
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Peter Schmidt is available as a speaker

Peter Schmidt is available to speak at colleges, bookstores, schools, churches, and at gatherings of education associations. His past speaking engagements are listed at the bottom of this Web site. If interested in having him appear, e-mail him at schmidt_peter@msn.com. He also is available as an expert source for journalists covering affirmative action. Those on a tight deadline should email him at peter.schmidt@chronicle.com.


Hear interviews with Peter Schmidt

Jack Lessenberry of Michigan Public Radio talked to Peter Schmidt about Color and Money in August. You can hear the interview here. Reading the book inspired Jack to write an essay on it, which you can read here. You also can hear Peter Schmidt talk about his book on the NPR program Justice Talking and in a Chronicle of Higher Education podcast.

Color and Money Is a College Course!

Many college professors are now using Color and Money in their classes, but Jack Dougherty, the director of the educational studies program at Trinity College in Connecticut, has gone a big step beyond. He has decided to name a freshman seminar "Color and Money" and to structure the class around the book. He has graciously agreed to share his syllabus, available here, for faculty members at other colleges who may have the same idea.



THE COLOR AND MONEY BLOG:



Tuesday, December 4, 2007

What High Schools Feed the Top Colleges? A Wall Street Journal Analysis Holds a Few Surprises

A Wall Street Journal analysis of enrollment data from eight highly prestigious colleges shows that overseas schools and science- and math-focused public magnet schools now rank alongside New England prep schools and New York private schools as the institutions' leading feeders. A Chronicle of Higher Education synopsis of the Journal story is available here. The Journal's list of the top feeders of the eight colleges studied--Chicago, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Pomona, Princeton, Swarthmore, and Williams--is available here. Check out the school with the 13th best success rate in terms of the share of students it sends on to one of these colleges. Its location? South Korea. UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal subsequently published a correction admitting major flaws in its methodology and saying additional corrections may be possible. Although the story's bottom-line conclusions generally hold true, the accompanying rankings should be viewed as a work in progress.

Advocates of Diversity in the Legal Profession Face One Major Obstacle: Law Schools

When leading advocates of diversity in the legal profession held a recent panel discussion in Washington, they seemed fairly confident they had found ways to prod law firms to hire and promote more blacks and Hispanics. They seemed much less certain of their ability to push law schools to diversify their enrollments, mainly because the schools face considerable pressure from the publishers of law-school rankings to take in only applicants with high LSAT scores. Click here to read full Chronicle of Higher Education coverage and a lively back-and-forth among the readers of its blog.

International Assessment of Scientific Literacy Shows How Racial Gaps Hurt U.S. Competitiveness

The results of an international assessment of scientific literacy among 15-year-olds show that United States ranks below 16 of the 30 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation, and 8 of 27 other nations or "jurisdictions" (such as Hong Kong) that administered the test. When the test results for the United States are broken down by race and ethnicity, however, a much more complex picture emerges. White 15-year-olds in the U.S. did fairly well, with their average score being below just 30 OECD nations' (Finland, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and the Netherlands) and three non-OECD nations' or jurisdictions' (Hong Kong, Taipei, and Estonia.) Black U.S. 15-year-olds, by contrast, were outscored by every OECD nation, including Mexico, and 19 of the 27 other nations and jurisdictions that administered the tests. Hispanic students were outscored by all but two of the OECD nations. The average score for Asian Americans was just a hair below the OECD average. A Chronicle article on the international test is available to subscribers here.

Group Plans Web Site Offering Alternative to College Rankings

The Education Conservancy, an organization opposed to commercial influences on higher education, appears to be well on its way to raising $400,000 to set up a free Web site to help students find the right college without relying on published rankings. Interestingly, much of the money has come from institutions that fare quite well in the U.S. News & World Report annual college rankings--the very contest that the Education Conservancy is most focused on rendering irrelevant. As described in a Chronicle of Higher Education article (available to subscribers here), preliminary plans call for the Web site to feature a questionnaire and diagnostic exercises to help students determine what colleges are the best fits for them.