defining the higher ed equity problem (in a gif)

The percentage of underrepresented minorities with a college degree has gone up a lot over the years. In 1974, only 5.5 percent of African American and Latinos had 4-year degrees. By 2015, those rates had grown to 22.5 and 15.5 respectively. That's good, but the white rate has grown too, from 14.0 percent in 1974, to 36.2 percent, too fast for the other groups to catch up. This widens the already existing gap in college degrees attainment, and inevitably holds back progress in other areas like the labor force. 

To illustrate, I made a gif of the attainment gap between black and white adults, and latino and white adults, over the last forty years. 

Hopefully this can help us make the case for HEA reauthorization to be more intentional about confronting racial inequity. We're going in the wrong direction, so our solutions will have to be explicit to right the ship.