Diversity, Not Quotas, for Colleges : Sharing of intellectual space both educates and empowers students. But campuses should beware bureaucratic tokenism.

Campus diversity is now a measure of a university’s success. But unlike affirmative-action programs that have polarized faculty both on the left and on the right by their narrow, bureaucratic intrusions on faculty selection, there has yet to be a standardized policy developed for achieving campus diversity. Campuses most engaged in the diversity debate are those that have seen the most change in their undergraduate student population in the last five years. Faculty discussions on diversity do not mirror the affirmative-action agenda because diversity is not defined solely by race, sex or ethnicity but includes sexual preference, age, income and educational background.

For elite institutions such as Harvard or Yale, discussions of diversity have little immediate relevance due to selection processes that ensure a relatively homogeneous student population--that is, Harvard may have a racial and ethnic mix, but from a relatively homogeneous class background.

On the other hand, public institutions such as the California State University system draw from public high schools. Demographic shifts in enrollment and differences in income levels of students are forcing Cal State faculty to address the issue of diversity to increase their own teaching effectiveness. This is based on neither moral nor political grounds, but rather on pragmatism, to ensure that we teachers can meet our students’ needs.

Diversity in higher education forces faculty and administrators to accept new power relationships. In the past, curricula were rigidly defined by faculty experts, but diversity requires breaking traditional disciplinary boundaries and acknowledging that curricula must be expanded to train our students in applied skills and critical thinking. Faculty must become more creative to retain undergraduate students and maintain their quality of instruction.

The incentive to hire diverse faculty does not stem from government mandates and quotas, nor should advocates of diversity allow affirmative-action bureaucrats to reduce the debate to tokenism and color-coding applicants. Rather, the discussion should be rooted in the comparative advantage that departments will have in hiring educators who are better equipped in the method as well as the content of teaching. We expand the base of knowledge that will prepare students to compete in the global market by including in their portfolio of knowledge an understanding of diverse cultures, history and languages.

Those opposed to diversity in education fear the loss of quality and continued Balkanization of our student population, and that group rights will take precedence over individual rights. Yet a major goal of such curricula is to provide a platform for acknowledging individual differences, particularly those within groups. From this knowledge, students should begin to recognize a common ground where alliances can form.

As an economist who recently began teaching in ethnic studies, I value the opportunity of using contemporary Chicano scholarship to teach students who would normally view economics as irrelevant to their lives. Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” shares the bookshelf with Chicana scholars. By whetting students’ intellectual appetite with relevant literature, I open the path for acceptance of alternative views and disciplines. This sharing of intellectual space is not a pedagogy of entitlement; rather, it is a pedagogy of empowerment.

That few faculty on college campuses have opportunities for cross-disciplinary teaching is unfortunate. Yet we who are on increasingly diverse campuses know that curriculum change is inevitable. Shifting power relationships within departments and colleges will result in acrimonious academic struggles not only in the Cal State system, but also at UC, where doctoral education will require greater public scrutiny to ensure that graduate-student training meets the hiring needs of state universities.

Diversity in our student population has forced us to challenge ourselves and our disciplines to regain student trust and public confidence. Though no college has resolved the issue of diversity in the intellectual playing field, we know that if it is to be effective, it must go beyond political correctness, tokenism and bureaucratic manipulation of faculty and curricula.