But do any HBCUs consider race/ethnicity at all in admission?
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The benefits to the colleges are in marketing to potential students (and perhaps donors and others).
Showing a visibly diverse group of students in marketing materials gives the implied statement that “students like you are welcome here” to as many potential students as possible. In contrast, it may be a turn off to potential minority students if, for example, a photo of a football fan crowd has no minorities in it other than a photo-edited one.
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I don’t know the answer with certainty, they could use it the same way not HBCU’s use it – But there would be no need. As black applicants are not under-represented at HBCUs.
In fact, it could go the other direction – With white students getting a slight preference, in order to add more diversity to the class.
I thought that while URM enrollment at Cal and UCLA declined after passage of prop 209, it increased at the other campuses and in the system overall.
Also, I believe URM graduation rates at Cal and UCLA went up dramatically after 209.
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I don’t disagree, but that’s not an academic benefit…they seemingly stumbled when Justice Thomas asked what the academic benefits of diversity are, and they were unable to elucidate good reasons, or any data.
They weren’t expecting the question. Absolutely diversity has value – Particularly exposure to the diversity that exists in the United States.
When we close our mind to only associating with people who are “like us”, that is a detriment.
I’ve never seen Justice Thomas so animated from the bench — He is known to RARELY speak during oral argument.
But I know he holds the extreme view, that “diversity” is not a legitimate government goal. More mainstream conservative judges will acknowledge that diversity is a legitimate goal, but will challenge the path taken to get there.
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That is shocking to me, it seems like a basic premise that diversity has value, but they couldn’t articulate that wrt to its benefit to academics. Agree with your comments about Justice Thomas.
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1 – College is an experience that transcends academic experience. What’s the academic value of recruiting athletes? What’s the academic value of legacy admissions?
2 – Yes, diversity of thought and experience absolutely translates into academic experience. The majority of academics today is based on group discussions, group projects… The model of a teacher standing in front of the room and lecturing, with an exam at the end of the semester – That model is mostly dead.
If you’re teaching a class on the effects of racism – Wouldn’t the whole class benefit from having students who can speak about their actual experience, instead of an all-white class just reading a book about it?
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I agree, my point was that I can’t believe the schools’ lawyers couldn’t answer the question in a compelling manner.
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Yes, in that class. But what does racial diversity have anything to do in a physics class?
An interesting question. I’m also interested in the phrase “diversity of thought”. Can one imagine a group that is racially diverse without having diversity of thought? Equally, can one imagine a group that is not racially diverse and yet does exhibit diversity of thought.
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Diversity of thoughts is what’s needed, in academics and in innovations.
If racial diversity is necessary for human process, we wouldn’t be where we are today, would we? Many countries around the world don’t really have racial diversity.
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I remember an example (though more SES rather than race/ethnicity*) from these forums. Back when COVID-19 vaccines were first becoming available, and many people were looking for them, a group in Philadelphia had a walk-in (no appointments) vaccination site in a low income area where people had to queue up in cold weather. There was plenty of criticism from forum posters (who strongly skew high SES), but it seemed like that method had the desired result of increasing vaccine access to low income people by deterring high income people from going there.
*Although the low income area was mostly Black as well.
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First, you’d be surprised. People from different backgrounds approach issues and learning differently. Even in physics. Different types of diversity may have different degrees of benefit in different classes, but even in a physics class, there is a benefit to racial, gender, ethnic, diversity.
Second, even Physics majors take humanities classes.
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I am really curious how all this diversity helps in a Physics class. Can you articulate with an example please?
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Thomas changed a lot during Covid. During covid, the chief justice started the questioning, and then they went down the row in seniority order, so Thomas was second. He used his time!
I think he dislikes the having to jump over people to ask questions and the constant interrupting.
I notice yesterday that they are back to the interrupting and talking over the lawyers, but that at the end of the time Roberts goes down the line again, making sure everyone has had a chance to question the lawyers.
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Just did…
“How would you approach this problem?”
And different people with different backgrounds, coming from different schools, different neighborhoods, approaching the problem with different lenses, offer a variety of approaches to learn from.
For example – males and females are known to generally have different learning styles:
https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/advan.00060.2006
Applying different learning styles to a problem is definitely a benefit!
But also think of differences in socio-economic, race, background – Maybe a poor student who has worked in the fields at the family farm will recognize simple machines of physics in a way differently than the wealthy student who is relying solely on his text book.
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You are talking about high school physics. Maybe middle school physics. Undergrad physics gets quite abstract quite fast. This is after putting aside the assumption that people from different ethnic groups have different physical intuition about our world. Which is a suspect assumption.
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I have a law degree. Prior to that, I received a Biology Degree with a Concentration in Genetics from an Ivy League university.
Speaking from experience, I can tell you the diversity is helpful both in the “hard sciences” and in the humanities.
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It was either Alito or Gorsuch who pointed to Harvard as an example of racial diversity without possibly diversity of thought given how wealthy Harvard skews, even among URM’s. Personally I see merit in this line.
When I think of the benefits of diversity to a school, I think of primarily diversity of thought, not defined as conservative vs liberal (whatever they mean these days), but diversity in perspective which is primarily driven by family and upbringing circumstances, such as family education, 2 parents, 1 parent, no parent, wealth, geography (urban, rural, suburban, north, south, east, west, flyover land, Red State/Blue State). To use race as a proxy for diversity in thought in fact seems racist to me – it implies people of the same race somehow think mostly alike. I agree that race can shape a person’s perspective, but does it do so more than the other circumstances listed above that for some students it is creates a “compelling interest” of an added plus?
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