Higher education institutions, by all accounts, are more diverse today than ever before. A recent report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) cites increases in college attendance among every racial minority group between 1976 and 2015, and Gallup notes that the number of millennials who identify as LGBT increased from 5.8 percent in 2012 to 8.1 percent in 2017 (National Center for Education Statistics 2018; Newport 2018). A 2016 NCES survey finds that 19 percent of undergraduates report some type of disability—from limited mobility to learning disabilities to mental health concerns (National Center for Education Statistics 2016). There is also greater socioeconomic diversity among students: the number of Pell Grant recipients nearly doubled within the last two decades to 7.1 million students in 2016 (Chingos 2018). Students are also more likely to come from urban versus rural environments, according to the NCES (National Center for Education Statistics 2015).
