Enhancing Campus Climates for Diversity

Research has found that a campus' climate negatively affects students of color. There was a longitudinal study of Latino students, for instance, that "perceptions of racial tension in the first year had a negative effect on academic and psychological adjustment" in the rest of their college career.
With such repercussions, campus climate is an important component of study when searching for solutions to the lack of informal interactions of diversity.

Campus climate is made up of internal and external factors. The internal factors stem from an institution's history of discrimination, or lack thereof against people of color, its structural diversity, and its psychological and behavioral climate. Psychological climates are the attitudes students hold for other races while behavioral climate is the actual intergroup friendships. Since people are found to be most affected by their friends, the psychological climate is most affected by the fact that most people do not have cross-group friends. The external factors are involved with governmental involvement, such as legal decisions on segregation and affirmative action, and the sociohistoric influences, such as current events that bring issues of race and ethnicity to the forefront.

Some solutions or methods to alleviate the issues campus climate perpetuates are to create and execute culturally educational programs that address stereotypes and myths about other sub-groups, to have clear policies set in place to manage racial issues when they arise, to regularly monitor the climate in an effort to maintain a good campus climate, to ensure culture organizations are adequately funded and staffed, to find staff that would professionally support students of color, to oblige students to make peer groups with people of differences in class, and to raise faculty's awareness of their racial biases and how this affects students. Other possible solutions or methods of alleviation include clearly expressing the expectation, based on the university's high value of diversity, that students engage with people different from them along with providing students with on-going safe environments to do so where all participants are regarded as equal and the aura is one of cooperation rather than competition. Furthermore, professors could implement cooperative learning activities to encourage cross-group friendships and consider how to reduce competition in the classroom. Finally, the university can implement more multicultural programs and activities and enlist the support of campus leaders to emphasize the importance of such programs and activities.

When it comes to culture clubs, studies have shown that cultural organizations help people feel more comfortable with their identity and that a possible result of this comfort is an increased penchant for cross-cultural activities. Studies showed that students who were members of culture clubs were more likely to attend diversity workshops and report more diverse informal interactions.

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.

Diversity's Impact - Studies on Diversity in College Classes

The diversity of students has greatly increased since the early 1960s, so much so that, as of 2000, there is one minority for every four non-minority persons. This is possible in part due to President Lyndon B. Johnson, Brown Vs. Board, and affirmative action practices. The value of diversity, specifically "the belief that knowledge or understanding flourishes best in a climate of vigorous debate" has been around since Socrates' time, and it continues to be important to this day.

One of the reasons diversity is vital is due to the critical analysis that occurs in diverse groups in which the "common-sense" knowledge is often not so common, that is, not everyone has the same experiences, perceptions, and knowledge. In today's world of inter dependability and globalization, it is increasingly important that future leaders are able to effectively work in environments of difference. College is a crucial point in people's lives where these said leaders can be exposed to diversity and practice accepting and working with the strengths and weaknesses that come with collaborating with these diverse people.

According to Gurin, there are three types of diversity: structural, classroom, and informal interactional. All of which are required to reap the benefits of diversity.  The type of diversity I will be focusing on is interactional, that is "the extent to which the campus provides opportunities for informal interaction across diverse groups." Benefits of classroom and informal interaction include "increased active thinking, academic engagement, motivation, and academic and intellectual skills [in addition to] greater involvement in citizenship activities, greater appreciation for differences as compatible with societal unity and greater cross-racial interaction." Diversity was found in later studies to be so significant as to influence students for as long as nine years after starting college.

Often universities emphasize structural diversity via practices such as affirmative action but this is as far as the "diversity" that colleges tout goes. It is a superficial type of diversity and I am interested in how to move past this surface diversity into the more beneficial types of diversity, more specifically, informal interactional diversity.

Cultural Diversity and Effect on Students' Futures

Similarly to "you are what you eat", and as naturally social beings, the interactions we have greatly affect our attitudes and ways of thinking. The article "Five Years After Graduation: Undergraduate Cross-Group Friendships and Multicultural Curriculum Predict Current Attitudes and Activities" explains how these interactions do not even need to be limited to social interactions. Students can also be exposed to difference in courses that discuss ethnic and cultural diversity topics. According to this survey study, there seems to be a correlation between students being exposed to diversity and the promotion of multicultural awareness and commitment. There may also be an increase in critical thinking skills and civic engagement activities, such as volunteering, due to exposure to diversity. It can be interpreted that the university's part in exposing students to difference is increasingly important as demographers have predicted that "by 2020, 1/3 of the United States workforce will not be White (Toossi, 2002)" and since universities are often the first opportunity students have to have significant interactions with diversity.

When it comes to the issue of interactions with diversity in a student with mostly White students, the article suggests two ways the impact of a mostly homogeneous environment could be maximized. One way is to have curriculum that covers topics of diversity or ethnic information. Another method is to extend their concept of diversity to not just a person of another ethnicity but also to a person of another religion or sexuality as well. They encouraged, especially, for those in a mostly homogeneous environment to make cross-group friends with those who are stigmatized.

Three recommendations made for the "higher-ups" in universities are, one, to include multicultural courses, especially those that include small group discussions, two, to foil students' tendency to create friendships with like-people by organizing programs that encourage more diverse friendships, and three, to create an environment where students feel safe interacting with different people.

Not For Profit Nussbaum

Progress, democracy, and the soul: all concepts that the United States seems to be doing wrong, according to Nussbaum. Sure, we may be one of the richest countries in the world, and, thus, our economic progress/growth gets an A but in terms of equality of success and wealth and the improvement of quality of life, what should be the true marker of progress, we are failing on many levels. Our recent penchant for the supposed money-making STEM majors over the “useless” critical thinking skills obtained from the humanities and liberal arts serves to drive the United States’ students away from democracy, that is, a government in which informed, questioning, critically thinking citizens are expected to participate and choose their ideal representative. When it comes down to it, then, what suffers the most is the soul, that is, the humanity rather than cold calculations, connection rather than manipulation, and empathy rather than productivity. Everything has its price and what we exchange for efficiency and money is our humanity, our warmth, our soul.

The fact that these concepts are related are explicated by Nussbaum’s discussion of the soul:

“When we meet in society, if we have not learned to see both self and other in that way, imagining in one another inner faculties of thought and emotion, democracy is bound to fail, because democracy is built upon respect and concern, and these in turn are built upon the ability to see other people as human beings, not simply as objects.”    

In other words, our definition of progress as economic progress with no concern for equality of distribution and access, enables and even sometimes encourages anti-democratic practices of manipulation and sole productivity, of seeing humans not as humans but as production tools. The significance from this passage comes from its explanation of how the concepts are interrelated and, thus, may help us to reevaluate our lives. Some might go through their daily lives unquestioning of the end goal to find a career, unquestioning of the authority around them and the penchant for efficiency and productivity. Through this passage we are reminded that there is more to life than production.

With such egregious unequal wealth distribution, it always surprises me that there is not more protest from the other 99%. The fact that this unequal distribution can also be seen as a failure of democracy, one of the concepts the  United States prides itself on, is even more reason to protest. Perhaps, however, people do not realize the trend that progress = more money, but only for the 1% and that education is increasingly coming to mean passing a standardized test and becoming dutiful working citizens. The discussion of the soul was especially refreshing to me since I have become accustomed to competing with others by endlessly looking for opportunities for my resume or professional growth. It is easy to forget the value of friendships and humanity when your focus is on surviving in a competitive job market.

Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education by Henry A. Giroux -

In a world where “Higher Education”, according to Giroux, is increasingly the puppet of commercialism and production, students are becoming increasingly apathetic to “his [or her] responsibility to society” and, worse yet, free thinking is silenced by dominant corporations and media messengers something needs to change. Something needs to change because Higher Education’s purpose is not simply to crank out employable candidates but, instead, to develop free-thinking and critical individuals who question the world and are not only aware of its issues but also brave enough and wise enough to know that simply knowing is not enough. One must act upon their knowledge and be civically engaged in the world and change. In the end, if “Higher Education” institutions fail at their main purpose, who will be able to combat and challenge the wealthy authority, the crushing 1%? Who will hold the greed and actions of the 1% accountable?

The fact is, if “Higher Education” keeps producing more and more people who simply go with the flow because their individual lives are superficially fine, it will most likely be harder for any change to be instigated as one of the main ways we can combat the wealthy are by banding together and taking action. We must first, however, recognize that something is wrong and go against the grain of what the dominant media tells us. I am quite sure Giroux would agree as he discusses higher education’s purpose and why free thinking is vital:

“ …confusing a market-determined society with democracy hollows out the legacy of higher education, whose deepest roots are moral, not commercial. This is a particularly important insight in a society where not only is the free circulation of ideas being replaced by ideas managed by the dominant media, but also where critical ideas are increasingly viewed or dismissed as banal if not reactionary.”

 In other words, democracy’s future should not be based off of market and commercialism. Instead, its focus should be morals and the public good. This focus is hard to achieve, however, when any nonconforming ideas that are beneficial for the public good are voiced.

When it comes down to it, it is in our best interest to fight for a more critical higher education system. Sure, we might get good grades from easy classes and find decent jobs but when it comes to solving harder problems and combatting injustices, one needs developed critical thinking faculties. Students should resist passivity and, instead, engage in the world’s issues as critical thinking beings to, hopefully, create a better world. Democracy should be a majority vote, not what the 1% wants.

Academically Adrift Statistics

You would think that after all the money, exams, and paperwork you go through to get accepted and to take classes at a university would pay off in the end, right? All the time and money invested into college, the supposed epitome of education, the supposed equalizer of minorities' systematic disadvantages. Unfortunately, as Arum and Roksa explain with data from their studies in Academically Adrift this is simply not the case. Not only are university students experiencing little to no growth in learning, as demonstrated by critical thinking skills and the like, but minorities' differences in learning stay the same, or are even exacerbated, in college.

Something is definitely wrong with an educational system which fosters academically adrift students whom feel obliged to go to college but have no way to reach their end goal, or an end goal at all for that matter, in mind. What irked me the most was how college is supposed to be the institution where the playing fields are somewhat leveled, to account for discrimination and disadvantages minorities and working class people face, but that it only perpetuated the inequality. Inequality is especially perpetuated by standard examination prep courses that prepare the upper class people way better for future academic endeavors than the working class or even middle class people.

At the end of the day, the United States higher education system is greatly lagging behind that of other countries and the intimidating thought is, although we were the main pioneers of higher education, others are catching up to us as demonstrated by a quote that put this situation into perspective in terms of the United States' economy.

“We may still have more than our share of the world’s best universities. But a lot of other countries have followed our lead, and they are now educating more of their citizens to more advanced levels than we are,” the recent federal report A Test of Leadership observed. “Worse, they are passing us by at a time when education is more important to our collective prosperity than ever.”

Thus, even though we may have been ahead of the higher education game at one point, we are now slacking when it  counts more than ever and this will ultimately be detrimental to our economy and citizens both of which will eventually get left behind.