| Abstract: | Social work programs in the United States (N=74) were investigated to determine strategies used for recruiting and retaining MSW students of color. Most schools had student populations exceeding 25,000 and combined BSW, MSW, and PhD programs. Data were collected using a Graduate Recruitment and Retention Scale with corresponding and acceptably stable subscales (alpha coefficients=.86 and .83, respectively). Long-term and durable problems were revealed vis-à-vis graduate student diversity, and few significant differences existed between public and private MSW program student diversity efforts. One exception was personalized follow-up to inquiries about application processes (p=0.01). Public or private status did not predict student diversity efforts in recruitment (Lambda 20, 35]=0.542, p>0.05, partial eta squared=0.458) or retention (Lambda 13, 50]=0.865, p>0.05, partial eta squared=0.135). |
