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:
Friday, November 2, 2007
In Science and Engineering, Many More Minority Doctorates than Minority Professors
A new report financed by the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation finds that blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans account for a much larger share of doctoral degree recipients in the sciences and engineering than one might surmise from the number of minority professors teaching classes in those fields at leading universities. In the field of chemistry, for example, the members of these three minority groups accounted for 7.5 percent of the doctorates awarded from 1996 to 2005, but just 3.9 of faculty members teaching chemistry at the 100 universities with the largest research budgets. As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education, the report says the paucity of minority college professors in such fields is a serious problem because such professors end up feeling isolated and minority students have little exposure to role models from their own racial and ethnic group. The report fails, however, to provide explanations for the numbers it offers. Is discrimination at work? Are differences in the prestige of the institutions awarding doctorates a factor? Might the private-sector businesses that compete with colleges to hire black, Hispanic, and Native American scientists and engineers be wooing them much more aggressively, and offering them larger salaries, than whites and Asian Americans in those fields? The report leaves the answers to such questions largely a mystery. A full text of the report is available here. Chronicle subscribers can find a story summarizing its findings here.