In fall 2012, US institutions of higher education enrolled over 21 million students, with 2.3% of these students (over 486,000) identified as “Two or More Races” (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013). The 2010 Census reported nearly 50% more multiracial children than the 2000 Census, making the “Two or More Races” youth demographic the fastest-growing of all reported racial groups (Saulny, 2011). As these children grow up and enter higher education, the percentage of multiracial college students will increase. This increase lies at the foundation for this chapter, which will focus on the complications attached to the enumeration of this population within US higher education and related policy concerns.

As others have pointed out (see Chapter Four), there is a positive relationship between higher levels of education and multiracial identification. What is it about higher education that might relate to such differences in identification? How are policies and practices on college campuses supportive (or not) of multiracial identity development? In this chapter, we answer these questions and explore how to improve higher education policies that impact multiracial college students

Although most of the attention of policy issues regarding increasing numbers of multiracial college students has focused on admissions and affirmative action programs (see Chapter Six), there are also policy issues related to the growing presence of multiracial college students after they matriculate. We discuss the importance of the campus racial climate for multiracial students and how they navigate potentially hostile structures and interactions on college campuses. For example, many multiracial college students must deal with micro-aggressions during interpersonal interactions on campus. These subtle, yet everyday, experiences with discrimination stem from a larger system of discrimination against multiracial individuals called monoracism (Johnston and Nadal, 2010). A pervasive and persistent belief that an individual is monoracial (of one race only), and that being monoracial is superior to being multiracial, is rooted in inaccurate, racist, and pseudo-scientific notions of so-called racial purity that undergirded the US's foundation as slave-holding colonies (Daniel, 1996; see also Chapter One). These beliefs persist today in social and organizational systems that assume and prefer that individuals are one race only, an assumption and preference we term monoracialism.