My last entry on the efforts of the small private colleges and universities in Iowa to increase the diversity of our faculty and staff elicited several wholly predictable responses asking for justification for that effort and questioning the value of diversity, per se, as a component of an educational institution.
There are, in fact, a number of solid studies showing how diversity positively affects the undergraduate experience, many of them done by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, as one commenter notes. It’s particularly important to add that all the private colleges in Iowa are small and primarily residential in nature, which, I think, increases the value of campus diversity, because what we all seek is a kind of “total experience” where the entire enterprise, not just what happens in the classroom, is part of the education we work to provide.
Still, regardless of any grand philosophical justifications for improving the diversity of our campuses, regardless of the national conversations about the value of diversity for undergraduate education, there is a compelling, conspicuously pragmatic reason for diversifying our faculty and staff.
At Buena Vista University, we have a group called the President’s Advisory Council, comprising local and regional business and cultural leaders who have an interest in the university and its students. (I am sure our colleague institutions have such groups as well.) This group meets once a year, in the spring, to discuss the university’s relationship with the community, and to give us feedback on how we can improve our programs to continue to help our students achieve success both immediately upon graduation and in the longer term of their careers and lives. It is important to note, too, that the members of the President’s Advisory Council often provide our students with internships, are their first employers out of college, and generally are a major source of opportunities for the university and our students.
In the past two years, we have asked them to help us define, for our particular circumstances and context, what skills and competencies our students most need to enhance their professional and personal prospects. In both of these sessions, the advisory council’s clearest consensus developed around students’ need to develop skills in working with people of differing backgrounds and cultures. What is often called intercultural competence, in other words, is for the members of the advisory council on a par with communication skills, critical thinking, work ethic, and integrity as a desired goal for prospective employees.
The local business leaders in the advisory council are not a group known for their leftist, “PC” sympathies. These are people who understand, at a very basic level, that one of the things their employees need is direct, practical skills at navigating interactions, negotiations, and relationships with people who do not have the same backgrounds and assumptions that they do. This message is as clear as can be.
So, to meet this need, the university simply has to provide opportunities for students to develop those practical skills, regardless of any political or philosophical reasons for doing so. One of the ways to do that is to make the campus a living laboratory to practice those skills in a safe place. To accomplish that end, the campus community—faculty, staff, and students—needs to mirror the diversity students will encounter beyond the campus, even here in rural northwest Iowa. If the university fails to provide this experience, we are failing to provide students with an aspect of their education that has been plainly indicated by their future employers to be a key part of the skill set those employers are seeking. This, I think, is an overwhelmingly compelling argument for enhancing diversity on campus, even absent any other, more grandiose justification.
Follow On Hiring through your favorite RSS reader:
31 Responses to Practical Diversity
gradilla - September 24, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Bravo! I agree. As an ethnic studies faculty member who teaches at a Hispanic Serving Institution in southern California–many fiscally conservative business leaders have also reached the same conclusion. We cannot assume that BVU alums are obliged to only live and work in IA. As a Californian, I would like to know that I can comfortably hire a college educated professional who will be culturally competent. It would be sad if non-coastal state universities did not train their students for the current realities of the U.S.
22261984 - September 24, 2010 at 2:28 pm
You have no way of knowing whether the people and situations your students will encounter in the workplace will have any similarity at all to the people and situations they will encounter on campus, and you have no way of knowing what role skin color and national origin will play in either one, and you certainly have no way of knowing that the former will help them with the latter. Furthermore, these interpersonal skills are, at best, a byproduct of higher education, not its purpose, and some uncertain possibility of some marginal improvement in them is no justification for the myriad costs of denying people admission because they have the wrong skin color and national origin.
rick1952 - September 24, 2010 at 2:54 pm
@22261984 – there are lots of things we have no way of knowing with respect to what is taught in college and how it impacts subsequent professional performance as well as the capacity to be a good citizen on general principle. We still teach the liberal arts as well as career specific knowledge in many different fields despite the many things we don’t know.What we do know based on human history, both over time and in our current era, is that too many people may have the technical skills appropriate to their particular careers yet are seriously deficient in their ability to interact with others due to a variety of socially constructed differences with which they are uncomfortable (and that includes more than skin color; think about religion, ethnic heritage, sexual orientation, gender, etc.) Given that lived experience, it behooves us to stop pretending that learning better human relations skills is a by-product of higher education rather than part of its primary purpose. And, one way to enhance those human relations skills is to practice them, just like any other skill, in a reasonably similar environment to the one our students will eventually find themselves in. If done with the appropriate expertise and integrity, then the improvement in human relations skills will be better than marginal and will probably go a long way towards making our society better economically and socially in an increasingly interconnected world.This is a perrenial human problem that needs constant effort in order to ameliorate its negative impact on individuals and society as a whole.BTW – it is noteworthy that the author is sharing not simply his idealistic opinion, but the pragmatic perceptions of those who have as their primary goal economic success.
bbaylis - September 24, 2010 at 3:31 pm
As part of a six-year longitutdinal and cross-sectional study in hte 1990′a of values development that involved more than 20,000 students at 50 church related instituitons, we used some of the standard HERI instruments for incoming students and seniors. These instruments ask did you associate with some one of a other race and whether you were satisfied with the opportunities to do so. In two administrations of the incoming student and senior surveys, a majority of students said that they did associate with some of another race and they were satisfied with the opportunities to do so. However, when we asked similiar questions of alumni two yars after they graduated, a mamority of responsdents said that they were not satisfied with the opportunities that they had as undergraduates to associate with someone of another race and they now wished they had more opportunities to do so as undergraduatees. Some went so far as to suggest that they should have been required to do more of it because now as graduates they see the benefit of it. THey found that it was a daily occurance in their jobs or graduate school. It should be noted that the institutions in this study were predominantly majority with minority pospulations varying between 7% and 30%, We noted no difference in the results depending upon the minority populaton of the institution. The satisfaction results should not be surprising. If all you know is one thing, it is easy to become satisfied with it, as opposed to something you haven’t experienced.
umb_pppa - September 24, 2010 at 3:36 pm
@22261984 – It is refreshing to realize that your core concern with this discussion concern is not really what we know or don’t know about what students may or may not learn about diverse environments will contribute to the success of their employers, but instead the risk of reverse discrimination. By all means, let us not incur the risk that diversity initiatives will hurt “people who have the wrong skin color and national origin”.
22261984 - September 24, 2010 at 5:03 pm
Corporate discrimination in the name of diversity is untenable, too, as discussed here: http://www.ceousa.org/content/blogcategory/56/85/
arrive2__net - September 24, 2010 at 9:46 pm
You could question whether the school can compete well enough to get highly qualified minority candidates into “the competitive range” for on campus jobs. None the less, if increasing diversity really has merit at a given school, it is likely that legal and non-discriminatory mechanisms will appear that will facilitate increases in diversity, assuming there is no counter-active discrimination going on. One idea is to organize fundraising events on campus that increase the exposure of the campus community to the local ethnic communities. That process might develop awareness that the door could be open to diverse ethnic job candidates, and it could help break down barriers that might facilitate greater campus diversity over the long term. If the campus community is brought together with local ethnic communities for effective fundraising events (including participation on planning boards as well as the event itself) … over the short term this would provide students with some direct interaction with those of diverse ethnicities. There may be other, better ideas that could bring the campus community together with diverse ethnic communities, through student government or other campus interest groups. By lowering barriers to interaction, the so-called “dinner party-effect” (people tend to hire people they would be comfortable with at an informal event, such as a dinner party) may do the job for you. That’s the best idea I have to offer.Bernard SchusterArrive2.net
21wr12 - September 25, 2010 at 3:21 am
@#2: You are correct.@#3: “seriously deficient in their ability to interact with others” Considering that faculty are acramonious people who can not function in their own homogeneous environment, I doubt that one or two foreign professors will make any positive impact on the students’ cultural awareness.@ The author: “make the campus a living laboratory to practice those skills in a safe place.” There is nothing safe about diversity. Providing students with a false sense of security is negligence.Solution: Adopt the European/Scandanavian model of requiring all students to spend one or two semesters at a foreign university.
22228715 - September 25, 2010 at 8:19 am
#8… vast generalizations, that even short and casual authentic experience in a decent college or university would likely refute. The last comment sounds great, but a little knowledge about Scandinavia/Europe might help you to understand that traveling to a foreign country from Scandinavia is not analogous (culturally or geographically) to doing so from most of the U.S.
maggierose911 - September 25, 2010 at 11:44 am
I can’t believe this (“practical diversity”) is being discussed as if it were some sort of new and profound idea. I just retired from one of the top 10 public universities’ support programs for underrepresented students. For at least the last 20 years every conference and campus event I’ve attended has stressed the practical need for facilitating diversity in higher education. It is so depressing to me to realize that this is still being written about as if most readers of the Chronicle had not encountered this before.
iteachpsych - September 25, 2010 at 12:47 pm
#10 – I don’t think the intent of the article was to treat practical diversity as if it were some new invention, but to redirect attention toward it. There seems to be an increasing societal trend to belittle diversity as some touchy-feely, politically correct, specious concept. However, I understand what you are saying; promoting the practical aspects of diversity to the readership of the Chronicle of Higher Ed is somewhat preaching to the choir.
david_r_evans - September 25, 2010 at 1:12 pm
#10 and #11, read some of the comments here, and to my previous entry (on seeking diversity in Iowa), and it’s pretty obvious that if we’re preaching to the choir, the choir is not exactly singing the same tune.And it’s certainly not as though we’ve solved the challenge, is it?
jffoster - September 27, 2010 at 7:04 am
Well, No 11, sing a discordant note in the choir I do. I agree with your general characterization of the trend, but there may be a more sinister aspect to Diversity Demagogery too. I think it’s mostly a bunch of crap and a euphemism for something else.
lwalton - September 27, 2010 at 10:38 am
As an ethnic minority and an administrator at a predominately white institution, I have learned to live and work in a white world pretty successfully. I’ve worked in both higher education and large corporations, and Mr. Evans is right. Successful people know how to navigate effectively interculturally. I have frequently encountered people throughout my work life who seem to believe, as some of these commenters evidently do, that diversity is some vast left-wing conspiracy (to do what, I’m not sure). Well, it’s not. It’s about learning to live and work together in a world that’s not going to become less diverse. Diversity is not going to go away. It’s not a problem to be dealt with — it’s life. Get used to it.
dank48 - September 27, 2010 at 11:00 am
About half the Fortune 500 execs and about half the upper levels of the federal government come from twelve elite institutions, and the Supreme Court is the product of Harvard and Yale. Diversity. Right.
153584ods - September 27, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Why are people with disabilities always left out of the “diversity” discussion? It would seem the only way most define “diversity” is by ethnicity when diversity is actually a significantly larger definition issue…
11126724 - September 27, 2010 at 1:07 pm
The US Supreme Court has already ruled, in the 2003 Grutter case, that providing a diversified student body during the educational experience is a “compelling public purpose” that justifies affirmative action programs in university admission.So, what’s the beef?
softshellcrab - September 27, 2010 at 2:15 pm
@ #14Yes, I am one who feels, no, make that knows for a fact, that “…diversity is some vast left-wing conspiracy”. It is exactly that. It is simply a buzz-word for anti-white affirmative action and for giving hiring and admission preference to non-whites and to some extent non-men (no, there’s no third sex, I just mean women). Let’s get real, its just about prejudice against the majority and prefering minorities in jobs, hiring, promotions, whatever. Period. Spare me the buzz words. I don’t believe in diversity as a goal whatsoever. I say hire the best, admit the best, promote the best, and if the “hisorically disadvantaged person, blah, blah, blah” isn’t the one, that’s just a little too bad. I believe in meritocracy, not govenment handouts and artificially favoring one group over another. I don’t see anyone pushing for “diversity” at HBCU’s. In fact, the very same people who push for “diversity” in traditionally “whiter” places tend to be people who would be aghast if we suggested getting rid of HBCU’s, which are useless historical anachronisms, famous for shockingly low academic standards and for being out of control, and totally anti-diversity in every way.
dank48 - September 27, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Hey, Softshellcrab, how do you feel about disabilities? I bet you can think of very good reasons the disabled shouldn’t inconvenience you in any way.
dank48 - September 27, 2010 at 2:41 pm
and speaking of disabilities, no one is so disabled as a person who mistakes feeling this or that, or holding an opinion, for “knowing something for a fact.”
tuxthepenguin - September 27, 2010 at 4:00 pm
I don’t usually respond to trolls, but I thought I’d have some fun with softshellcrab.Go to Google, find David Evans on the BVU website, and tell me if his picture suggests something wrong with your claim that he’s got prejudice against the majority.Particularly silly is ranting about this being a government handout, when BVU is a private university. Folks such as yourself should get out more. I’m pretty sure you’ve never lived more than 20 miles from home. However, if you actually enter the ‘foreign lands’ that exist more than 100 miles from home, you will encounter this thing where people are different. People like you will have some difficulty adjusting to the nice people that live in those foreign lands. It’s at that point that you will understand the value of being exposed to diversity. Not that it applies in your case, because guys like you don’t leave home, just note that your experience is not representative.
dboyles - September 27, 2010 at 4:19 pm
So, the majority is benefiting from the presence of the minority. What does the minority group get out of this? As someone in the midwest at a predominantly white university I have, for example, several Muslim graduate students. They have brought their families to the city. Is there a mosque here? No. Are there indigenous restaurants or groceris for them? No. Are there people of common mind in terms of religious worldview? No and far from it in a “red” state. It will be a long time before there are–if ever. Similarly, I am at an engineering university, bastion of male engineers with a small and steady number of women graduates throughout the decades. Granted, some women would like to pursue engineering. But does that mean we should actively recruit women who really do not like the rather rigid and narrow constraints that engineering education has imposed on their male counterparts for decades? Simon Baron-Cohen has noted that Asperger’s has a higher incidence within engineering families. It seems foolhearty to think that the majority of women would wish this kind of career or wants to socialize with those who do. Aren’t we doing a disservice to attract individuals where no pre-existing interest exists? Isn’t it one thing to open doors where they are closed, but another entirely to hoodwink and incentivize the uncommitted? These remain open questions to my mind. And what about the native American population? We have programs beginning with elementary school to similarly attract native Americans into science and engineering. Does that mean that once they are ‘hooked’ they will be happy? Be expected to be happy? Perhaps they would be just as–if not more–happy in other disciplines? Why not? Do we have disproportionate attempts to recruit into some disciplines but not others? Undoubtedly. Some staff here indicate that there are plenty of jobs on the reservations for native American engineers, as though that was a selling point. Why not point out there are jobs in, say, Washington, DC for qualified minorities? Making the campus a “living laboratory” may benefit the majority and open their closed minds, but I suggest we have a long way to go if we are to begin to realize that manipulation of individuals in the interest of agendas is far from equating to the simplistic “door opening” we say we are about. “Red” states are red for a reason, and one of those is their intolerance of different ideas in general, not just cultures different than their majority.
softshellcrab - September 27, 2010 at 6:04 pm
Oh no! Tuxthepenguin is “having fun” with me! How will my ultra-narrow mind ever face the new day!Does he really mean what he wrote? He says “…find David Evans [the author] on the BVU website, and tell me if his picture suggests something wrong with your claim that he’s got prejudice against the majority.” So we know how the author thinks by looking at his picture and his skin color? And just ignore what he wrote? Holy cow! I can’t believe in an academic forum such as this one that such a racist, ignorant argument was made. Did he really mean that, that we should look at someone’s picture and we’ll know what their opinions are? It sure is what he said.I repeat: “promoting “diversity” always means one thing, favoring one group/race/gender over another. Affirmative action started to develop a bad name as good people caught onto its unfairness, so the liberals’ new buzzword became “promoting diversity”. Just another way to promote the same old tired, unfair, agenda – preferences for hiring/promoting/admitting the less qualified over the more qualified, so long as they are a member of some allegedly victim group, blah, blah,blah. Spare me.David Evans on the BVU website, and tell me if his picture suggests something wrong with your claim that he’s got prejudice against the majority
cjones599 - September 27, 2010 at 6:12 pm
To the author: Thank you for this view of diversity and its importance. If you look at the amicus briefs in support of the university for the Michigan affirmative action cases, you will find this same thread of thought in support of diversity in the student body. So there is nothing new here. What continues is that this type of article, as important as it is, simply brings out the kinds of comments (e.g. comment 18) that form the bases for continuing affirmative action policies into the next millennium.
tuxthepenguin - September 27, 2010 at 7:19 pm
@softshellConsidering that you chose to ignore everything Dr Evans wrote (and clearly did not even bother to read it) I put it in terms you can understand. He has provided good justification for being interested in diversity. You dismissed his position, providing no evidence for your accusations. The absurdity of claiming his only reason for wanting diversity is prejudice against white people is, well, absurd, if you consider that he is white.Everything we do favors someone. When I serve on a search committee, I put the applications into three groups, those to interview, those to possibly interview, and those who are not suitable. I openly admit that this creates a favorable climate for the first group.Universities favor applicants with good grades over applicants with bad grades.Heck, even car dealers favor one group: those willing and able to pay for the car.If part of the job is providing diversity, then by gosh, that should be taken into consideration. Maybe you’re one of those commies that wants the government to dictate to private institutions how they should run their organizations.
lorelette - September 28, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Hi, Judy–thought you might like to see this!All the best,Lorelette
aclutz - September 30, 2010 at 12:03 pm
Dear bbaylis, Can you provide a link or citation for your study? I would be very interested in reading your research.Thanks.
lwalton - September 30, 2010 at 2:00 pm
@softshellcrab: HBCUs are open to everyone — there are plenty of white people, as well as people of other races and from other countries who attend them. Although they have a historical mission to reach out to African American students, they frequently are sought out by others. Case in point, Xavier of Louisiana’s pharmacy program. Check out their enrollment to see if they are discriminatory.If anything is discriminatory in higher education, read the Chronicle’s recent articles on legacy admissions. The “old boy’s club” in predominately white universities is pretty exclusively white.As other responders here have suggested, please try to get out more and view the world through others’ perspectives. You just might learn something. A professor at my institution once shared with me the premise of a writing course he taught. Students were asked to write a paper supporting their position on topics they were passionate about: abortion, affirmative action, etc. After those papers were submitted and graded, they were asked to write another paper, supporting the opposing position. For a great deal of the students, having to research and compellingly write about the opposing view was a mind-opening experience. It’s sort of like watching both Fox News and MSNBC: truth (and sanity) probably lie somewhere inbetween.
softshellcrab - September 30, 2010 at 2:35 pm
@lwaltonI appreciate your point, but they’re called HBCU’s for a reason, and the emphasis will always be on favoring a particular race, in this case blacks, or they would not be called HBCU’s. Actually, I fully expected that my stance against pushing diversity, as just being a new buzzword for racially discriminatory quotas and affirmative action, would be criticized in a forum largely populated by college faculty that tend toward the liberal. That’s fine. But note that my comments were actually buttressed here by comments like # 24 (which actually expresses disagreement with me) and #17 where the writers affirm my premise that “diversity” efforts are simply synonymous with affirmative action/quotas. My point exactly, as those posts echo. If you like affirmative action/quotas, as many liberal thinking college faculty do, that’s fine. I don’t. Thus I grow tired of hearing it called a “push for diversity” which is really just a modern codespeak for these same policies of which many Americans are growing tired.
gplm2000 - October 1, 2010 at 9:26 am
AUTHOR: “…students’ need to develop skills in working with people of differing backgrounds and cultures. What is often called intercultural competence,..” Hmmm. I guess this applys to those students who segregate themselves into cultural/ethnic groups in the cafeteria, greek system, social clubs and academic majors. Society accepts diverse formal groups as long as the “right” group is separating from the mainstream.
olivia55 - October 1, 2010 at 3:34 pm
Amen!