This morning, The Chronicle of Higher Education published a story about the University of South Carolina, and its ambitious goal to bring African-American enrollment more in line with the state's population of African-American residents. Given that the state population is over a quarter African-American, and USC's student population is about 9.5%, and given the timeline (by 2025), this goal is ambitious, to say the least. The story had a chart, showing the mathematical gap of the states, using a simple measure: Percentage of African-Americans in the state flagship institution, minus the percentage of African-American students in the state population. In case you can't get to the story (and if you work in education you really should consider supporting our trade paper with a subscription), it looks like this: On this map, you can see the light colors, where the gap is the largest, and the dark colors, where the gap is the smallest, or in some cases, actually negative (tha
