For the last 40 years or so, American higher education has been engulfed in a craze for “diversity.” But does this push actually make our campuses more diverse? And what side effects does it have?
Thomas Grennes examines those questions in today’s Martin Center article.
Grennes, an emeritus professor of economics at North Carolina State University, notes that proponents of “diversity” contend that their policies are necessary to close gaps between various groups in their college participation. He responds: “Critics refer to proportional representation as the Fallacy of Disparities. It doesn’t logically follow that, just because there is a statistical disparity, the explanation must be discrimination. As I point out here, American women have longer lives than do men on average, but there is no reason to attribute that disparity to discrimination for or against either group.”
The equality we should be concerned about is equality of opportunity for individuals, not equality of results by groups.
Furthermore, Grennes points out, differences in results are far better explained by differences in ability and effort, not by “institutional racism.” Sadly, scholars who make that argument are putting themselves in danger from the diversity zealots, with Harvard’s Roland Fryer being a case in point.
And if “diversity” is important, why focus only on one aspect of it — race? Grennes observes, “Higher-education officials often say that they want more ‘diversity,’ but they’re only referring to a very few of the great number of ways in which people differ. They strive for racial diversity, but they never say why that is so much more important than the other aspects of diversity that they don’t seem to care about.”
It would be much better to evaluate people based on their individual abilities than on whether they add to “diversity” because of their ancestry.