The discrepancy between four-year and two-year schools likely has to do with the fact that fewer of the two-year schools are residential, and are more likely to enroll older students who are working or who have children and other obligations that make organizing and participating in protests or campus discussions more difficult. According to the American Association of Community Colleges, the average community college student is 29, and two-thirds attend part-time. These schools also generally enroll a higher percentage of African American and Latino students than four-year schools.

But older, more demographically diverse students will make up a growing portion of four-year colleges in the coming years, too. The Education Department predicts that the number of college students over age 25 will rise faster than for those under 25 (20 percent compared to 12 percent) between 2012 and 2023. Ultimately, the profile of a typical college student is shifting, meaning college leaders are or will soon be serving a population that expresses a more varied set of views and desires than has historically been the case. The idea of the Ivory Tower is not only undesirable; it’s also untenable.

This is especially true at St. Louis Community College’s Florissant Valley campus, which sits just a few miles from Ferguson, Missouri, the largely African American city that erupted in protest after a white police officer fatally shot Michael Brown, a black teenager. Race is an ongoing topic of discussion at the school, which mostly serves students of color, said Ruby Curry, the school’s interim president. “We’re so close to the center of things,” she said. “Instead of students protesting, we had faculty-facilitated listening circles, which allow students to express concerns.” The school also brought in law enforcement and community members to speak with students.

While Curry said her students are mostly commuters who lived in the Ferguson area and saw campus more as a safe haven and less as a place to protest, the lack of campus protests likely also has to do with the fact that the school has been trying to increase the diversity of its faculty and is undertaking an analysis of where its policies and practices might disadvantage people of color. “It’s the curriculum, it’s the attitude, just looking at it as a broad spectrum,” Curry said. In other words, she’s acting with the knowledge that recent protests and demonstrations aren’t isolated incidents, but manifestations of a broader debate over racial equality and access to resources, educational and otherwise.

Anonymous comments from presidents surveyed also reveal that they are, at the very least, generally aware that the nation’s college students are an increasingly diverse group. “Our typical student is an urban young man of color. Faculty and other staff are mostly white and middle class. I’d like greater consciousness among staff and more dialogue in the community about race,” wrote one. “The national issues have manifested at my campus as a genuine focus on eliminating the disparity in student academic achievement by ethnicity and on being more proactive in diversifying the faculty,” said another. “Staying in close touch with those I serve is critically important. I use face-to-face meetings of various sizes, open forums, social media, and regular written messages to the campus. Maintaining a healthy campus climate where everything thrives requires hard work and openness to diverse perspectives every day,” added a third.