On Wednesday 19 universities committed to making sure more minorities and low-income students attend and graduate college.

The 19 public universities, mostly in California, New York and Florida, announced this week they would introduce efforts to resolve the problem by 2015, according to an article by the Associated Press.

National statistics show black and Hispanic students are two to three times less likely to graduate from college than white students.

The universities said they would address issues like the increasing costs of education, living costs and academic holes in their own curriculum.

The universities will keep tabs on their own progress and be transparent about their efforts. They said they will release data for graduation rates for low-income students, something that is rarely done by most American universities. 

A study released this year by researchers at UPenn and Princeton shows race-based admissions at universities are more beneficial to upper-income and foreign blacks than to low-income blacks whom the policy supposedly targets.

Key Statistics:

1. At highly selective colleges and universities, 27 % of black students had at least one parent born outside the U.S.
2. Of these students, 43% had Caribbean heritage and 29% were of African descent.
3. At the eight Ivy league schools, over 40% had at least one parent who was foreign-born.
4. Of American-born black students at the 28 schools, 25% came from families with incomes of $100,000 or more (the national average is just 7%).
5. Of American-born blacks, 27 % graduated from private high schools

Several newspapers have explored the issue. A Toledo Blade article, Affirmative Action: Which Blacks Benefit Most? provides an interesting look at this discrepancy.