Special Issue on Diversity in Higher Education

cation and recent anti-affirmative action legislation that poses setbacks in college access for underrepresented minorities (URMs). One important misconception is that K–12 schools have sufficiently addressed past inequalities in providing URMs access to college preparatory education. This article attacks this misconception using the circumstances in K–12 schools and the University of California (UC) as a case in point. Those concerned with improving access to higher education for underrepresented minority students have used a variety of metaphors. Because students take different and often fitful journeys to college and beyond, including stops in community colleges and the workforce (Bowen & Bok, 1998; Cooper, Denner, & Lopez, 1999; Cooper & Gándara, 2001; Gándara, 1995), this article employs a “pathways” metaphor to describe students’ journeys through K–16 education. Pathways are preferred to the prevailing “pipeline” metaphor because the pipeline invokes the image of students poured into one end of a seamless conduit and flowing out the other end, thereby implying that college preparation and admissions processes are smooth and highly predictable. Looking at students’ various pathways helps us see that efforts to increase diversity within higher education need to go beyond traditional outreach. Underrepresented students and their families need university outreach representatives to help them navigate the college-going process. But there are also entrenched structural and cultural deterrents in K–12 schools and surrounding communities that shape students’ pathways through high school and beyond. Those students who “make it,” particularly first-generation college students and underrepresented miThis article describes the efforts at the University of California, San Diego to increase campus diversity by developing collaborative school–university partnerships with 18 local elementary and secondary schools in low-income, urban communities. Education research on school reform and sociology of education are drawn from to help examine the process of developing partnerships. This research provides a theoretical lens to study how multiple contexts (e.g., schools, districts, and the university) shape partnership work and the extent to which partnerships succeed in increasing the pool of underrepresented students eligible for the university. Data from fieldnotes, formal and informal interviews, documents, and videotaped presentations and student focus groups are discussed. This approach goes beyond traditional outreach and focuses more broadly on facilitating equity-minded school reform through collaborative school–university partnerships. The data shows that a collaborative partnership model can increase college-going outcomes for underrepresented students and promote equitable change in school structures and climate.