ABSTRACT
The students’ perceptions and testimonies are not criticisms of the institutions, but depictions of individual experiences and sense-making of some experiences. Students’ backgrounds and prior exposure to institutions of higher education equally influence the way they experience the world and multiple institutional agents within the campus environment. The difference of race in the institutions of higher education partially indicates that the type of college does make a difference for many students. Interviews with students of color continue to show them to be plagued with feelings of isolation, inadequacies, distrust, and adjustment problems to college. Most of them believe that, due to their racial and ethnic characteristics, they have an additional challenge while attending predominantly White, private institutions. The conceptually clustered matrix, rather than relying on time or role as the organizing principle, orders the display by concepts or variables.
