Beyond the Numbers: Institutional Influences on Experiences With Diversity on Elite College Campuses

In this article we bring together the burgeoning qualitative literature on the socializing influence of residential colleges, the survey‐based literature on campus racial climate, and the literature on diversity work in organizations to analyze how two elite universities’ approaches to diversity shape students’ experiences with and feelings about diversity. We employ 77 in‐depth interviews with undergraduates at two elite universities. While the universities appear comparable on measures of student demographics and overall diversity infrastructure, they take different approaches. These varying approaches lead to important differences in student perspectives. At the university that takes a power analysis and minority support approach, students who participate in minority‐oriented activities develop a critical race theory perspective, while their white and nonparticipating minority peers frequently feel alienated from that programming. At the university that takes an integration and celebration approach, most students embrace a cosmopolitan perspective, celebrating diversity while paying less attention to power and resource differences between racial groups. The findings suggest that higher education institutions can influence the race frames of students as well as their approaches to multiculturalism, with implications for their views on a variety of important diversity‐related issues on campus and beyond.     

The relationship between faculty diversity and graduation rates in higher education

This study examines the relationship between faculty racial/ethnic diversity and graduation rates of undergraduate students, in particular those from underrepresented racial and ethnic minority populations. Using IPEDS data, the researchers calculated a Diversity Score for each institution. Findings suggest U.S. faculty diversity is lower than in the U.S. national population. Overall graduation rates for underrepresented minority students of all races/ethnicities are positively affected by increased diversity of their faculty.     

The logic of bio-meritocracy in the promotion of higher education equity

Abstract

This article argues that there is incomplete acknowledgment of the historically racist and ableist meaning of merit in the promotion of higher education equity. Consequently, a masquerade of merit positions mechanisms of standardization – including physical environment, classroom norms, and co-curricular activities in addition to admissions criteria – as seemingly neutral practices in the academy because they construct able-bodiedness/mindedness as naturally occurring and empirically measurable. Thus, merit-based decisions are afforded the status of simply making sense. Individuals are understood to succeed because of their natural talents and hard work, rather than because they resemble the normed archetype of higher education fitness. We call this the logic of bio-meritocracy, and argue that it operates pervasively, yet paradoxically, within systems of higher education. The continual marginalization of individuals labeled with disabilities within the academy is therefore not arbitrary, unintended, or accidental, but rather tied to the maintenance of able-bodied/minded supremacy.     

Phenomenography: the development and application of an innovative research design in higher education research

This article considers the application of phenomenography, as arguably the only research design (so far) to have been developed substantially within higher education research by higher education researchers. It considers its origins, meaning and application, and the issues and critiques that it has raised. It concludes that, while phenomenography has both acknowledged limitations and undoubted achievements, it still appears to have much to offer to higher education research, and its usage might be extended to other fields.     

Disability and participation in the professions: examples from higher and medical education

Learners with disabilities remain under-represented in higher education and courses, such as medicine, that grant access to ‘the professions’. National and professional legislation, policy and guidance have changed over the last few decades in response to reforms in the way disability is viewed and valued by society. Principles of equal rights and equality of opportunity inform the negotiation of widened participation in the professions. However, drawing on the example of medical education, it is possible to see that widening participation agendas may be insensitive to the needs of learners with disabilities. Analysing the development of practice and policy from a participation perspective suggests that tokenism may have played a role in deprioritising the voices of individuals with disabilities, rendering policy disconnected from the needs of marginalised groups. The concept of participatory parity may provide an opportunity to readdress this misrepresentation.     

Living in the city: school friendships,diversity and the middle classes

Much of the literature on the urban middle classes describes processes of both affiliation (often to the localities) and disaffiliation (often from some of the non‐middle‐class residents). In this paper, we consider this situation from a different position, drawing on research exploring whether and how children and adults living in diverse localities develop friendships with those different to themselves in terms of social class and ethnicity. This paper focuses on the interviews with the ethnically diverse, but predominantly white British, middle‐class parent participants, considering their attitudes towards social and cultural difference. We emphasize the importance of highlighting inequalities that arise from social class and its intersection with ethnicity in analyses of complex urban populations. The paper's contribution is, first, to examine processes of clustering amongst the white British middle‐class parents, particularly in relation to social class. Second, we contrast this process, and its moments of reflection and unease, with the more deliberate and purposeful efforts of one middle‐class, Bangladeshi‐origin mother who engages in active labour to facilitate relationships across social and ethnic difference.     

Hearing the voices of disabled students in higher education

Since the return of the Labour government to power in the UK in 1997 issues of social inclusion have risen up the political and statutory agenda within higher education (HE). This study reports the findings of disabled students lived experiences and views of transition from induction through to employability within one HE institution. The study examined the perspectives of disabled students via a questionnaire and face‐to‐face interviews. It found that there was still much work to be done in levelling HE experiences for disabled students and identified five key issues that should be addressed in order to enable access and entitlement to HE. These are pre‐course induction support, commitment by HE institutions to facilitating barrier free curricula, consultation with disabled students, institutional commitment to develop support services and embedding of personal development planning.     

Critical aspects of cultural diversity in music education: examining the established practices and cultural forms in minority language schools in Finland

This article addresses the role of general music education within the framework of cultural diversity. The empirical part of the article focuses on teachers in Swedish-speaking minority schools in Finland and their perceptions of the relationship between music and multicultural perspectives. The results showed that in some instances it took some time for teachers to discuss, define and grasp the concepts of multiculturalism and cultural diversity in relation to their teaching activities. While much was discussed on a theoretical and/or political level, it was not necessarily something that they would connect to their own practice.     

Experiences of visually impaired students in higher education: bodily perspectives on inclusive education

Although previous literature sheds light on the experiences of visually impaired students on tertiary grounds, these studies failed to provide an embodied understanding of their lives. In-depth interviews with 15 visually impaired students at one university demonstrated the ways in which they experienced their disability and the built environment in their bodies. At the same time, lost, fearful, shameful and aching bodies revealed prevailing gaps in provision for disabled students. Through this research it becomes clear how the environment is acutely felt within fleshly worlds, while bodies do not fail to tell of disabling societal structures. Based on the bodily stories, we thus make recommendations to improve the lives of visually impaired students on tertiary campuses.     

English language learning in the Japanese higher education sector: towards internationalisation

The graduate attribute ‘global competence’ is increasingly viewed as a significant learning outcome of a tertiary education. In Japanese higher education, global competence appears to be a lesser priority despite Japan becoming increasingly pluralistic. This article explores how adjunct foreign English language teachers (AFELT) encourage global competency in their classes. Data were drawn from 43 participants across 66 Japanese universities through focus groups and interviews. The research revealed that the positionality of AFELT on the margins institutionally had both affordances and constraints. First, being on the margins meant that AFELT had significantly lower status both institutionally and in students’ eyes, and AFELT were consequently constrained by these views. Second however, and paradoxically, distance from university hegemonic practices also provided affordances for AFELT in disrupting them. AFELT highlight that their pedagogical practices, while constrained, are both subversive and necessary in achieving students’ intercultural and global competencies.     

A paradox of social change: how the quest for liberation reproduces dominance in higher education and the field of social work

Transformative societal change rests upon challenging the status quo with the constant work of self-implication. Self-implication in the neo-colonial processes at work within state structures is not easily noticed, nor easily discussed, regardless of one’s social location among various dimensions of privilege and oppression. In both higher education and the profession of social work, one of the major barriers to advancing the social change needs of groups who come from a multiplicity of differences is the still prevalent overemphasis on essentialism and identity-based politics, which was originally inspired and promoted by the anti-racism social movement. The anti-racism movement needs to take into consideration the overarching power of neo-colonialism and hegemonic masculinity that influences and affects the overall discourse, structures and social processes in human relations. Differences across the spectrum of one’s identity carry inherent contradictions, tensions and paradoxes, such that no one can claim innocence regarding whose voice should be heard at a particular moment or within a particular spatial or institutional context.     

Discourse and the containment of disability in higher education: an institutional analysis

We use a social model of disability to examine disability discourse at a regional university in the mid-western United States. Using an institutional unit of analysis and several different information sources (e.g. interviews, federal regulations, syllabus texts, surveys), we illustrate the ways in which disability-as-difference is governed by an architecture of containment at the university.     

Assessing attitudes of college students toward cross-cultural relationships: Implications for social work practice,research, and education

Higher education in America is a major social institution and an incubator of intellectual thought, holding an important and transformative place in the public domain, but it has also been implicated in the perpetuation of inequality, and the feeding of racial animus. The research question guiding this quantitative study explored predictors of college students’ perceptions of interracial relationships, which led to the querying of factors likely to impact social distance regarding interracial relationships at a mid-sized, diverse, rural university in the south. Two instruments were utilized to test the variables; the Bogardus Social Distance scale and the Social Dominance Orientation scale. The findings indicate statistical significance among two of the three variables examined, when controlling for socioeconomic and demographic variables; positive interracial experiences (p = < .002) and, greater amounts of interracial social contact (p = < .046) predict lower social distances regarding interracial relationships. Implications for higher education involve greater efforts toward social inclusion, increased cultural sensitivity, and an acknowledgment of the current and past structural and systemic inequities that have hindered positive race relations, and a vow to rectify those.     

At the intersection of science,technology, engineering,and mathematics and business management in Canadian higher education: An intentional equity,diversity, and inclusion framework

In this study, the authors address the persistent discrimination cis women face in the Canadian science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) higher education context. Pulling on the notion of interrelationships that cross educational faculty boundaries and on intersectionality scholarship to unsettle the structural and disciplinary domains of power, the authors ask, “How can business education and STEM education work together with respect to social considerations, such as gender/race/ethnicity/etc., and social equity and inclusivity, within the Canadian higher education system?” This study aims to build on these interrelationships among diverse, complex individuals who participated in a graduate-level STEM and business management summer institute to provide an evidence-based and intentional equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) framework for STEM higher education contexts. Using a mixed-methods approach, which saw data collection via a survey instrument and semi-structured interviews, the subsequent quantitative analysis points to expanding interrelationships to broader areas beyond STEM and business management programs. The close reading of the collected qualitative data, via antenarrative spirals, elevates the participants' complexities beyond focusing “just” on their intersecting identities to looking at their perceptions of STEM fields, the order that ensues and the potential for the undoing of that order. The findings, results, and analyses of these collected data led to an intentional EDI framework, the main contribution of this study, constructed into three main pillars represented by the figure of a tree: the foundational elements (roots) built on individuals' complexities and experiences of Othering, the interrelationships (trunk) possible across various educational and professional dimensions, and a call to structural change initiatives (branches) with the possibility for growth in other areas. This work then contributes to not only filling a significant literature gap and building awareness regarding EDI concerns in STEM contexts via active interrelationship-building activities but also to unsettling the structural and disciplinary domains of power by embracing a holistic strategy to address systemic discriminatory practices in the Canadian STEM higher education context.     

Concepts of choice and motivation in the discourse on the globalization of higher education

This paper reviews the findings of a participatory research project conducted with Nepali high school and university students. It examines the feelings and motivations of those students who leave the country in pursuit of higher education, and those who intentionally, or due to circumstances, stay in Nepal. An analysis of the latter is particularly important to the shifting discourse on higher education to the global South. This study promotes the inclusion of those students, and institutions, of higher education in developing nations who have been excluded from the discourse on globalization.     

Social support,the presence of barriers and ideas for the future from students with disabilities in the higher education system in Croatia

This paper examines how students with disabilities in Croatia perceive support, experience barriers and propose ways forward for equality of opportunities in the higher education system. In qualitative interviews, students were satisfied with the informal support they received from family and friends but dissatisfied with the formal support they received from universities and the government. Obstacles to inclusion included: inadequate transport and finance to attend university and minimal adaptation of buildings, toilets, lifts, classrooms and dormitories. Students proposed: investment in adapting buildings, personal assistants, educational grants and transport; coordination within the formal systems from national government to universities and non-governmental organisations; and measures to increase disability awareness for academics, professionals and other students within higher education. The situation for students with disabilities in Croatia is a reminder for those working in countries where policy and practice is relatively advanced that many disability battles are still to be won in newer nations.     

Social class background and gender‐(a)typical choices of fields of study in higher education

By employing a Bourdieu‐inspired class scheme that differentiates between classes’ volume and composition of capital, and by analysing Norwegian administrative register data for birth cohorts between 1987 and 1992, this paper examines the relationship between social class background and gender‐(a)typical choices of higher education. Fields of study in higher education in much of the Western world remain segregated by gender despite the gender gap in educational attainment having been reversed. However, some changes have taken place due to the influx of women into male‐dominated, high‐status fields. Few recent studies have examined the relationship between social class background and gendered educational choices in light of these changes; furthermore, the focus of previous research has been limited to the vertical dimension of class. The results presented in this article suggest that men and women are more likely to make gender‐atypical choices when this leads to social mobility and that focusing solely on the vertical dimension of class may mask horizontal differences.     

The Bologna Process and the harmonisation of higher education systems in other world regions: a case from Southeast Asia

The Bologna Process has inspired harmonisation strategies for higher education systems in other parts of the world. However, developments in other contexts are not much under review in the European debate. The present article describes the case of Southeast Asia and the attempt to promote harmonisation of its higher education systems. It further compares the processes in ASEAN and the European Higher Education Area to then discuss open questions for future comparative research. To do so the authors re-contextualise data from a study in ASEAN against the background of future research needs in the field of higher education harmonisation.