Legitimating Prestige through Diversity: How Higher Education Institutions Represent Ethno-Racial Diversity across Levels of Selectivity (original) (raw)
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This article uses four data sets to assess changes in the relative weights of test-and performance-based merit criteria on college enrollment during the 1980s and 1990s and considers their significance for affirmative action. Our results support the "shifting meritocracy" hypothesis, revealed by selective postsecondary institutions' increased reliance on test scores to screen students. This shift has made it difficult for institutions to achieve diversity without giving minorities a "boost" through race-sensitive preferences. Statistical simulations that equalize, hold constant, or exclude test scores or class rank from the admission decision illustrate that reliance on performance-based criteria is highly compatible with achieving institutional diversity and does not lower graduation rates. Evidence from a natural experiment in Texas after the implementation of the "top 10 percent" law supports this conclusion. The apparent tension between merit and diversity exists only when merit is narrowly defined by test scores. 2 The total number of applications for the 223 most selective four-year institutions (in which acceptance rate is lower than 50 percent) in 2003 was 1,400,646, whereas the 272 least selective schools (acceptance rate higher than 85 percent) received only 415,316 applications (NACAC 2006:12, table 9). The average number of applications per institution was 5,934 at the selective institutions, compared to 1,526 applications at the least selective schools. The total number of applications in 2003 was 4,981,052.
How university diversity rationales inform student preferences and outcomes
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021
Significance There are numerous reasons why institutions of higher education may choose to embrace diversity. A common rationale sanctioned by the US Supreme Court is that diversity provides compelling educational benefits and is thus instrumentally useful. We show that such instrumental rationales are the predominant rationale for diversity efforts in American higher education, are preferred by White Americans and not by Black Americans, that they are expected to advantage White Americans, and that they correspond to greater racial disparities in academic achievement. Overall, these findings suggest that the rationales behind universities’ embrace of diversity have nonlegal consequences that should be considered in institutional decision making.
Race and Higher Education: Fields, Organizations, and Expertise
Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 2019
How do racial meanings structure the institution of higher education and the organizations and networks it encompasses? This chapter develops a theory of racial activation to usefully link conceptualizations of race and organizations. This theory examines how racial meanings shape organizational fields, forms or types of organizations, and the strategic use of racial meanings by actors in organizations to create a more robust understanding of the processes by which organizations are themselves made racialized. Predominant scholarship on race can largely be characterized as theorizing the mechanisms by which race is constructed or uncovering the patterns and consequences of inequality along racial lines. Much existing research hovers above at a macro level where national, state, and global powers are understood to impose racial categories, symbols, meanings, and rules onto daily life while higher education has largely been studied as a site where we see the effects of broader social disparities play out. This chapter draws on insights from inhabited institutionalism to develop a theory of racial activation that usefully links conceptualizations of race and organizations to provide an intersectional and interactional approach to the study of fields.
The Use of Race-Based Affirmative Action by Elite Colleges and Universities: Creating Alternatives
2015
The practice of using race-based affirmative action to admit underrepresented ethnic minorities who, when comparing standardized test scores and grade point averages, are considered less qualified than Whites draws contentious public debate. Racial preferences remain unpopular, in large part, because most people realize that getting into a selective college often generates many advantages for the student. For instance, less selective colleges spend approximately 12,000perstudentwhilethemostselectiveuniversitiesexpendapproximately12,000 per student while the most selective universities expend approximately 12,000perstudentwhilethemostselectiveuniversitiesexpendapproximately92,000 per student. Employment wages are estimated to be 5 percent to 20 percent higher for graduates of selective colleges, and extensive research has shown that 54 percent of America’s corporate leaders and 42 percent of high government officials are graduates of just 12 of the top universities in the country. My thesis proffers, through an inferential and comparative analysis of several bodies of literature on the topic, that using race-based ...
University of the Free State, 2007
Contrary to a still common belief that diversity lowers standards, current research in Higher Education indicates that an institution that wishes to maintain a competitive advantage needs to put well-managed diversity very high on its agenda, for reasons of academic and pedagogical excellence as well as to be responsive to changing local and global dynamics. In order to rearticulate diversity as an imperative driven by the search for excellence, the established institutional culture needs to be interrogated to understand why diversity is constructed as a "problem" and attitudes and values are maintained that are hostile to an inclusionary culture. A key element in this institutional culture is whiteness, and different forms of multiculturalism can be identified in terms of their relationship to the power of white privilege. This article names and discusses several assumptions that may underpin received practices and approaches within Historically White Universities (HWUs), which need to be rigorously challenged, and argues for an approach to diversity which can be described as "Critical Diversity".
Diversity and Affirmative Action in Higher Education
Journal of Public Economic Theory, 2008
We examine the practice of affirmative action and consequences of its proscription on the admission and tuition policies of institutions of higher education in a general equilibrium framework. Colleges are differentiated ex ante by endowments and compete for students that differ by race, household income, and academic qualification. Colleges maximize a quality index that is increasing in mean academic ability of students, educational resources per student, an income-diversity measure, and a racial-diversity measure. Proscription of affirmative action requires that admission and tuition policies are race blind. Colleges then use the informational content about race in income and academic ability in reformulating their optimal policies. Finally, we examine "racial profiling" as an alternative explanation for college admission policies that weigh race.
Affirmative action, diversity, and racial justice: Reflections from a diverse, non-elite university
Theory and Research in Education, 2016
In this article, I argue (1) affirmative action diverts attention from more urgent needs of racial justice in education – better quality K-12 education, and better quality and more accessible public higher education; (2) the increasing wealth of students at affirmative action institutions is a sign of diminished quality of those students compared to those at less selective institutions, who are comparatively disproportionately black and Latino; and (3) aligning the standard rankings of colleges with the quality of student (and quality of instruction at the different kinds of institution) would benefit black and Latino students as a group much more than affirmative action does.
Camouflaging Power and Privilege: A Critical Race Analysis of University Diversity Policies
Educational Administration Quarterly, 2007
Background: Universities continue to undertake a range of initiatives to combat inequities and build diverse, inclusive campuses. Diversity action plans are a primary means by which U.S. postsecondary institutions articulate their professed commitment to an inclusive and equitable climate for all members of the university and advance strategies to meet the challenges of an increasingly diverse society.Purpose: To examine, using