Diverse U Celebrates Its 100th Birthday

Recently the Newark campus of Rutgers University held a gala reception to honor the founding of the university 100 years ago. In its early days, the Newark campus of New Jersey’s flagship state university educated the children of European immigrants who worked in the city’s factories.

Now Rutgers-Newark is one of the most diverse college campuses in the United States. There are about 10,000 students enrolled, 6,500 of whom are undergraduates. Blacks make up 19 percent of the enrollments at the Newark campus. Hispanics are 19 percent of the student body and Asians make up 24 percent of all undergraduate students. Whites are the largest ethnic group but they are only 29 percent of the student body.