GLOBAL: Elite universities are tested on diversity

David Lammy is still mad. In December, Lammy, a former British higher education minister, currently serving as a Labour Party Member of Parliament, released figures showing vastly different success rates for white and black applicants to the UK's two oldest universities - Oxford and Cambridge. But have other countries done any better meeting the challenges of diversity? asks DD Guttenplan in The New York Times.

In the United States, universities consider many factors besides test scores in determining admissions, according to Lammy. "If you graduate first in your class in Harlem, the Ivy League schools are going to want you," he said.

Dutch universities are far less hierarchical, said Dirk Jan van den Berg, president of the Delft University of Technology. Entry to most university courses in the Netherlands is not competitive. Students who have completed the proper high school course are simply admitted. But in those courses where the state has set a limit on the number of places, the Dutch have a novel solution. "There are still no entry exams. Instead there is a lottery," Van den Berg said.
Full report on the New York Times site