Interethnic Contact, Curriculum, and Attitudes in the First Year of College

Since Brown v. Board of Education (1954), social scientists have argued that education is important to change in racial attitudes given opportunities for interethnic contact. Students today are presented, also, with opportunities for interethnic learning through curriculum and extracurricular programming. The importance of contact, curriculum, and residence hall programs for the attitudes of first-year college students from three ethnic groups was examined. Students ( n = 791) completed surveys at the beginning and end of the year. Regressions tested the relationships of these first-year experiences to intergroup attitudes (awareness of ethnic inequality, support for policies addressing ethnic inequality) at the end of the first year, controlling for initial attitudes and background. Contact and curriculum were related to attitudes for European American students .