College Diversity - Meta-Analysis

A couple of the benefits of diversity are the reduction of prejudice and the improvement of cognition. There are two types of cognition: cognitive skills and cognitive tendencies. Cognitive skills are a students' information processing, thinking, and reasoning skills such as critical-thinking and problem-solving. Cognitive tendencies involve a students' penchant for certain thinking patterns such as effortful thinking or attributional complexity, that is, the understanding that human behavior is influenced by complex factors. Because it is likely that cognitive tendencies are the easier shaped of the two types of cognition diversity experiences may be more influential on cognitive tendencies than on cognitive skills.

There are studies on diversity that have differing results on the relationship but this may be due to the "type of diversity experience measured, type of cognitive outcome, and study design characteristics." Informal interactional diversity, the type of diversity I am hoping to see more of at universities, includes "both the frequency and the quality of interactions with diverse peers that occur outside of class." Although structural diversity is needed for interactional diversity to be possible, merely having a university with a lot of diverse people is not enough to achieve the benefits of diverse interactions. When it comes down to it, "enlightenment", that is, "classroom diversity" is also not enough to achieve the benefits of diverse interactions.

Despite the various confounding variables in studies of diversity, at the end of the day, the evidence from the meta-analysis in this article shows a positive relationship between experiences of diversity and cognitive development. Albeit, the magnitude of this relationship could be considered "small" to some, but, when put into context, this effect can be quite meaningful when one accounts for the fact that measurements of such abstract concepts as cognitive tendencies can be full of measurement error as well as the fact that a "small" effect's smallness depends on what academic field one is in.

Going forward, research needs to focus more on how universities can maximize the benefits of diversity, not whether one exists in the first place. For instance, Bowman (2009) found that cognitive benefits from diversity coursework are often only in White students and students from low- and middle-income families. One way universities can help promote informal interactional diversity is by having a graduation requirement that all students enroll in one diversity course. This requirement would be especially important for students in natural sciences and engineering since these students are less liekly to be engaged with diversity and enroll in diversity classes. Interestingly enough, if students enroll in more than one diversity course, there is no difference seen in benefits versus a student enrolling in one diversity course.