It’s been less than a month since I got home from college, and I’ve since been reflecting a lot about my first year. Obviously, I’ve noticed that there are a lot of differences between college and K-12 education -- like having more freedom and living at school with your friends. For me, one big difference is the racial diversity in each education system.

I live in New Jersey and attended public school from kindergarten through high school. I noticed through the 13 years in my local school district that it’s mostly Asian (Indian and Chinese). In the 2006-2007 school year, the percentages of Whites and Asians were close to equal, with 45 percent and 44 percent, respectively, the rest consisting of six percent Blacks and five percent Hispanics. Fast forward about 10 years, to the 2015-2016 school year, and the Asian majority becomes apparent, with an ethnic breakdown of 64.6 percent Asians and 24.3 percent Whites, then 5.5 percent Blacks and 4.3 percent Hispanics. This differs significantly from the New Jersey public school averages, with Whites at 49 percent, followed by 24 percent Hispanics, 16 percent Blacks and nine percent Asians.

I thought that this was how most public schools were, with a majority of Whites and a small percentage of other ethnicities. After doing a lot of research, I came across the Ethnic Diversity Index and the Diversity Score. The Ethnic Diversity Index, according to usatoday.com, “measures, on a scale of 0 to 100, the chance that two randomly chosen students come from a different racial group.” To explain this better, a school district consisting of a student population of solely one ethnicity would have a score of 0, while a school district with equal representation from each ethnic group would have a score of 1.

I realized that the different diversity of my hometown school district might not be as special as I thought. According to publicschoolreview.com, the average diversity score for an United States public school is .50, with less than half having under a .50 score. The state with the highest average for diverse public schools is Hawaii, with a score of around .76, while the state with the lowest is Vermont, with a score of around .17. New Jersey has a score of .68, coming in fourth. The full list can be found here.

So, growing up, I was used to being part of the majority ethnicity (if you couldn’t tell by my last name, I’m Chinese). However, I realized that when I started college, I wouldn’t be part of the majority. When I went on college tours, I would sit in the auditorium with other prospective students and look around, observing that most, if not all, were Caucasian. As I walked around campus during the tours, I found the same to be primarily true of the student body, at whatever given college I was visiting.

In the 2014-2015 school year, the diversity scores of colleges were pretty much split down the middle, such that half of the listed schools had a diversity score of .50 or above, and the rest fell below that. The list can be found here. The colleges that were generally ranked the highest in diversity were those in Hawaii, Texas or California, Ivy League schools, or specifically, Rutgers in New Jersey. Those schools and states had scores of around .70 to .76.

I now attend a small liberal arts college in upstate New York. With a significantly White majority, their 2014-2015 diversity score is .33. In 2015, the racial breakdown was 78.9 percent White, 8.9 percent Hispanics, 3.2 percent Blacks and three percent Asians. However, the school is making continued efforts to increase their diversity, as should all colleges.

Given that the national population isn’t equally diverse, it’s impossible to achieve equal diversity in school districts and colleges. According to the U.S. Census report from 2014, the U.S. population consists of 77.4 percent Whites, 17.4 percent Hispanics, 13.4 percent Blacks and 5.4 percent Asians. However, colleges should promote the value of diversity and continue to make efforts to build and grow their student population, with regard to the national (and even international) ethnic breakdown.

It’s equally as important that colleges educate the whole person, as it does the academic student. While college does teach us the necessary and crucial skills needed to find success in our future profession, we also learn lifelong skills, such as the importance of caffeine in pulling an all-nighter! However, the college experience helps us learn more about ourselves, the world, and our place in it.

In a rapidly globalizing world where companies span countries and many careers require collaborating with people from all over, understanding and welcoming racial diversity is important. As such, it’s critical that we learn about other cultures and races, as well as the importance of diversity and the lessons it can teach us. Immersion is a powerful teacher, so by being a part of a diverse student population and environment, we learn through interactions with other people, thus hearing different points of views and broadening our horizons, as well as fostering a greater understanding and acceptance of different people, thus promoting tolerance and genuine human compassion.