What does "Diversity" mean? Does it miss the point?

winchester · October 21, 2008, 11:40am

Many schools feature diversity in their promotional materials and information sessions, proudly quoting statistics about the racial, economic, religious, and regional backgrounds of their student populations. Diversity is often a required topic on application essays.

On a recent college visit I asked a college representative for the statistics the college has on the political views of their student population. The answer I received was We dont have that information.

So I asked Why not?

Data from recent elections suggest that the ratio between the two main political viewpoints in this country, liberal and conservative, is very close to 50/50, with other less prevalent views also in the mix. So, one would naturally expect the student populations on most campuses to approximate that same ratio. Furthermore, with the emphasis colleges place on achieving A well rounded population of students, rather than A population of well rounded students, as I heard at a recent college fair, and the resulting racial, religious, economic, and regional balance of students the colleges claim, one would expect that the political views represented on those very campuses would be similarly well rounded.

And yet, with a few notable exceptions, the liberal/conservative ratio on most college campuses leans heavily to the liberal side.*

Why?

Some might suggest that young people in their late teens and early twenties tend toward liberal ideas, as does the college atmosphere of trying different things and finding one's self. So it follows that many colleges would lean liberal.

Fair enough. But a liberal leaning is not what we see. What we see on campuses nation wide is liberal domination. Therefore, the college atmosphere naturally leans liberal is an insufficient explanation of the phenomenon.

So I ask:

What do we really mean by diversity?

Isnt the diversity of ideas the most important diversity of all, especially in college?

Can a college honestly claim diversity if it doesnt even know the range of ideas that are represented on its campus, and the ratios of students who hold those ideas?

Since the racial, religious, economic, and regional diversity on college campuses today has failed to yield an attendant diversity of ideas, but instead has apparently achieved the opposite, doesnt diversity as currently implemented miss the point entirely?

What should colleges do to better promote diversity of ideas on campus?

A well known business maxim is What gets measured gets done. In that light, wouldnt gathering and reporting statistics on the political views represented on campus at least be a start?

How could that be done? Many college applications provide the student the opportunity to indicate their ethnic heritage. Why not provide a similar opportunity for them to indicate political preference?

Are there any legal impediments to gathering data about political viewpoints? What are they? Colleges already have very detailed personal information about their students and the students families via applications for the colleges and for financial aid, so clearly legal impediments, if any, should be minor.

How much influence does the college faculty have over the views of the students? Could college hiring practices be a factor? Are policy changes in order?

Is the problem really with the colleges, or should diversity of political ideas be part of the high school social studies curriculum, such that college applicants have a more rounded outlook to begin with?

These are difficult questions, I know, and Ive probably left out several other important ones, but in my opinion it is quite clear that effort to level the playing field is required.

<ul>
<li>Note: The fact of liberal domination on college campuses can be verified via an internet search, as can the unease that is sometimes felt by Conservatives on many college campuses, and so in the interest of brevity neither is reiterated here.</li>
</ul>

Please keep any responses to the subject at hand, namely: What is our current concept of diversity? Has it achieved its goals? Does it need to change? If so, how? What can, or should, colleges do to effect a corresponding change in their student populations?

Please refrain from debating the relative merits of any political viewpoint. That discussion is for another time and place.

tokenadult · October 21, 2008, 1:00pm

This is an interesting set of questions.

T26E4 · October 21, 2008, 3:01pm

I agree: these are interesting questions. You mention the more heavy representation of liberal to conservatives on campuses. I would surmise that this is an accurate reflection of college-bound 18-22 year olds in the USA. I posit that the heavy nos. of “liberal” college students to “conservative” ones is because there ARE MORE liberal college students than conservative ones. It’s not as if conservatives are somehow being disenfranchised and shipped off to only a few colleges while the “liberals” try to keep their Ivy towers free of such knuckle-draggers. I think it’s an accurate display of that demographic more than a “top down” conspiracy by college faculties and administrations and admissions officers.

Therefore, if hypothetically 40% of college bound seniors are conservative, would it be right for a school to actively recruit up to 40%? What if only 5% of college bound seniors are really conservative (I really don’t know what this no. is)? Does that change your views? Should colleges lower their standards to recruit conservatives who aren’t planning to go to college in order to increase their 5% representation?

Your thoughts?

Bay · October 21, 2008, 3:08pm

I remember reading that most people’s political leanings change over the course of their lifetimes. Children tend to be conservative, young adults liberal, parents with families conservative, and older people liberal. It has to do with what sorts of protections and social services you need at those different stages of your life, and it seems to make sense.

_rentof2 · October 21, 2008, 3:23pm

I have read that statistically people with higher education levels tend to be more liberal. If those more highly educated liberals are raising well-educated students, wouldn’t those students likely reflect their parents’ political inclination? Professional incomes that can pay for top schools are also often concentrated on the more liberal coasts, as well. I wonder if the liberal-heavy environment of many top colleges isn’t due to a higher concentration of liberal students being drawn to appy and to be accepted.

I don’t know, but expect that colleges in more conservative parts of the country might well be at least more conservative, even if there is a liberal majority student body.

I live in a pretty liberal community, but the few self-proclaimed conservative kids I know pretty well who are academic high-achievers, are looking at military academies, private religious schools, or state U’s in Texas. I think these choices are based on a kind of cultural identification with those options, just as my liberal kids were conversely not interested in them. There is probably an element of self-selection in all this, combined with a demographic tendency of educational and professional backgrounds.

I do know one proud conservative student who went to UCBerkeley, but I hear now that he really doesn’t like it because it’s just too big and impersonal.

It would be absurd, imo, to ask students to declare a political position as part of applying to school. It would just be another silly game trying to figure what will help you get an edge. If a student has been politically active for a conservative cause as an EC, I think that actually may play to their favor where schools are looking for diverse points of view.

aranyria · October 21, 2008, 4:54pm

The main issue with choosing students based on political beliefs is that beliefs change. People aren’t inherently liberal or conservative. So someone could apply with one belief and change their minds by the time they get to the school.

blu_g8orade · October 21, 2008, 5:54pm

and therein lies the fallacy… if you’re going to look at recent elections, use data from the 18-22 demographic, because those are the students on college campuses.

i am almost certain that at least 60-70% of college-aged kids are liberal.

tokenadult · October 21, 2008, 6:59pm

The joke common in Britain is that “a young man who is not a liberal has no heart; an old man who is not a conservative has no brain.”

uman · October 21, 2008, 7:50pm

The smarter you are, the more liberal you tend to be. People in college campuses are much smarter, on average, than the general population.

T26E4 · October 21, 2008, 9:00pm

uman: no need for such inflammatory assertions. Like the poster said earlier: youth are liberal, middle age are conservative, older return to liberal – as a huge generality

winchester · October 22, 2008, 12:52pm

Below are my responses to some of your comments, but let me make something clear right up front: I completely support the notion of ethnic and socioeconomic diversity on college campuses. Please don’t misconstrue my position as being against it.

What I am saying is that the notion of diversity hasn’t gone far enough. Just as, if not more, important than ethnic and socioeconomic diversity, is the diversity of ideas, and in that regard I believe there is room for improvement.

I stand by my view that initiatives to achieve ethnic and socioeconomic diversity on campuses across the nation has failed to achieve the most important diversity of all, the diversity of ideas, in proportion to the actual statistics, and in fact, the atmosphere on most college campuses actively discourages conservative viewpoints which begs my other questions about what ‘diversity’ really means.

‘*****

In reference to my claim that “Data from recent elections suggest that the ratio between the two main political viewpoints in this country, liberal and conservative, is very close to 50/50”

blu_g8orad said, “and therein lies the fallacy… if you’re going to look at recent elections, use data from the 18-22 demographic, because those are the students on college campuses. i am almost certain that at least 60-70% of college-aged kids are liberal.”

So I looked up the numbers via a quick internet search. My search was not exhaustive, but the numbers in the first three hits I looked at seem to corroborate each other so I’m taking them to be legitimate.

In actual fact, blu_g8orade’s estimate is way too high. Only about 45% of today’s 18-29 year olds are Democrats.

(For the sake of this discussion I’m equating Liberals with Democrats and Conservatives with Republicans, though I realize that’s not always the case.)

I’ll grant you, as I said in my original posting, and as T26E4 and ‘rentof2 pointed out, that young people tend to be more liberal than conservative, and the numbers reflect that too. Twenty eight percent of. 18-29 year olds are Republicans, and the rest are Independent.

I’d have preferred data about 18-22 year olds because that’s the true college undergraduate age group, but even allowing for a few percentage points more toward the Democratic side for the younger group, that still wouldn’t come anywhere near blu_g8orade’s claim of 60 to 70%.

I did get one hit for the 18 – 24 age group, and that showed the split to be LESS liberal leaning, not more as I and it seems most of you would expect.

We could quibble about how to distribute the Independents between conservative and liberal, but I think we’d agree that they’re not all liberal or all conservative, so the basic conservative/liberal or Democrat/Republican ratios would be little changed.

Here are the actual numbers I found, and below I provide a further description for the rationale behind my view:

1) A report with a letterhead from Rutgers University
<a href=“http://www.eagleton.rutgers.edu/YPPP/MilleniumGenFS.pdf[/url]”>http://www.eagleton.rutgers.edu/YPPP/MilleniumGenFS.pdf</a>

Democrat and leans Democrat: 45%
Republican and leans republican: 28%
Independent: 26%

2) Rock the Vote 2008 February 2008 poll
[Who</a> Are Young Voters?](<a href=“http://www.completecampaigns.com/article.asp?articleid=116]Who”>http://www.completecampaigns.com/article.asp?articleid=116)

Democrat: 47%
Republican: 28%
Independent: 16%.

3) An article in The Pulse Magazine, November 2003
[the</a> Pulse - College Beat: College students: A potent “swing voting group” of 2004?](<a href=“http://www.thepulsemag.com/College/swingvote.html]the”>http://www.thepulsemag.com/College/swingvote.html)

The article quotes from The Harvard University, Institute of Politics Spring Survey. It says “The Harvard Study debunked three myths about 18- 24 year old voters: (1) we don’t vote; (2) we’re not engaged and; (3) we’re all democrats.”

“In general, 4% more students are liberal (36%) than conservative (32%), with 29% moderate. On economic issues, students are largely moderate to conservative. On the other hand, students lean liberal to moderate on social issues.”

‘*****

Here’s some more rationale for my view: I’ll admit that my view is based mostly on my own personal experience. I don’t have firm statistics on the actual Democrat/Republican sentiment among college students. But I have been on many college campuses over the past two years. My son is a college freshman and my daughter is a high school senior so I’ve done a lot of visiting. What I can tell you is that there was a very strong Liberal “vibe” on all of them. The overwhelming majority of political paraphernalia, in the form of signs, message boards, information tables in campus centers, etc. on college campuses has been in support of Democratic candidates and issues. Furthermore, my view is supported by discussions elsewhere on CollegeConfidential, anecdotal evidence in the news, and statistical polls of college faculty. And finally, over the past couple of years I’ve probably read the “Fiske Guide to Colleges,” the “Insider’s Guide to Colleges,” and “The Best 366 Colleges” from Princeton Review cover to cover. I have not actually tallied the number of schools that are described as liberal vs. those with a conservative description, but I can tell you that one comes away from those books with the very distinct impression that a “typical” college leans either slightly or strongly liberal, and if one wants to find a college that is described as conservative one has to consciously seek out “known” conservative schools. For example, below are some typical quotes from the Princeton Review book, the last two come from the Pepperdine and Air Force Academy descriptions:

“a very diverse population as far as ethnicity and origin goes, but as a whole is very politically liberal.”

“leans far enough to the left to tip over; there’s also not much of a religious quotient to the student body, and those that are find themselves “subtly looked down upon.”

“Mostly “students are left wing in political persuasion and are proud of it.”

A smaller number of student bodies are described as:

“Politically, there’s a mildly liberal slant.”

But descriptions like these, while they do exist, are few and far between:

“Politically, conservatives tend to dominate”

“from conservative backgrounds.”

‘*****

T26E4 said: “It’s not as if conservatives are somehow being disenfranchised and shipped off to only a few colleges while the “liberals” try to keep their Ivy towers free of such knuckle-draggers. I think it’s an accurate display of that demographic more than a “top down” conspiracy by college faculties and administrations and admissions officers.”

I agree completely. I don’t see any sort of intentional conspiracy either.

‘*****

'rentof2 said: “I don’t know, but expect that colleges in more conservative parts of the country might well be at least more conservative, even if there is a liberal majority student body.”

‘rentof2 also said: “There is probably an element of self-selection in all this, combined with a demographic tendency of educational and professional backgrounds.”

Agreed. Good points. Especially the one about self selection. I didn’t think of that, but of course it is true.

‘*****

‘rentof2 said: “It would be absurd, imo, to ask students to declare a political position as part of applying to school. It would just be another silly game trying to figure what will help you get an edge. If a student has been politically active for a conservative cause as an EC, I think that actually may play to their favor where schools are looking for diverse points of view.”

I don’t think it is absurd at all to provide students the option, just as is done with the ethnic background questions on college applications, to declare a political affiliation. It’s one more box to check if you choose , and that’s all.

I also don’t see how the college application process would be any more of a game than it already is. The quote from an admissions officer in my original post says it nicely. He said “We’re not looking for a population of well rounded students. We’re looking for a well rounded population of students.” It sounds to me not dissimilar to trying out for an acting role. At some level it doesn’t matter how good the actor is, they either fit the role or they don’t. Even the best 60 year old actor is not going to get a part playing a 10 year old. If a college is trying to construct a well rounded population of students then they’re going to pick the students that fit the roles they want filled. Only in this case, the students are at a disadvantage because they have little or no idea what ‘roles’ the college is trying to fill, and so have no idea at all whether, or how, ANY extracurricular activity will help or hinder their chances for admission.

‘*****
aranyria said: “The main issue with choosing students based on political beliefs is that beliefs change. People aren’t inherently liberal or conservative. So someone could apply with one belief and change their minds by the time they get to the school.”

That’s much less true than you might think. I read a book on this topic some years ago. It was actually an eBook I downloaded and read on my Palm Pilot. I thought it was called “It’s My Party.” I tried to look up a reference for it but I couldn’t fine one. Anyway, the book describes why people identify themselves with one political party or another. It turns out that our affiliations are much more “inherited” than we might think, to the point that would not be a big stretch to describe it as almost tribal. To many people there is a very real, very large, very fundamental difference between the core principles of liberalism and conservatism. People are much less apt to ‘change their mind’ than one might expect.

‘*****

tokenadult said: The joke common in Britain is that “a young man who is not a liberal has no heart; an old man who is not a conservative has no brain.”

Wait. That’s a joke?

‘*****

uman said: “The smarter you are, the more liberal you tend to be. People in college campuses are much smarter, on average, than the general population.”

First of all, T26E4 is correct to say “no need for such inflammatory assertions. Like the poster said earlier: youth are liberal, middle age are conservative, older return to liberal – as a huge generality”

But for the record, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the trend is actually in the opposite direction. The more educated a person is, the more they tend to vote Republican.

Here’s the web site: [The</a> 2008 Statistical Abstract : Elections](<a href=“http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/elections.html]The”>http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/elections.html) where you can download an excel spreadsheet with the actual numbers.

Here are the numbers from the last three presidential elections:

2004 
Less than high school: Democratic 69%, Republican 31%
High school: Democratic 46% Republican 54%
Some college: Democratic 47%, Republican 53%
College or advanced degree: Democratic 50%, Republican 50%

2000 
Less than high school: Democratic 65%, Republican 35%
High school: Democratic 53%, Republican 47%
Some college: Democratic 50%, Republican 50%
College or advanced degree: Democratic 50%, Republican 50%

1996
Less than high school: Democratic 82%, Republican 18%
High school: Democratic 60%, Republican 40%
Some college: Democratic 56%, Republican 44%
College or advanced degree: Democratic 49%, Republican 51%

And for corroboration here are some 1990 Gallup poll numbers relating education to political affiliation. (Source: The World Almanac of U.S. Politics, 1991-93 edition, p.25). Which I found here: [The</a> Quantum Pontiff » Party Affiliation Versus Education Level](<a href=“http://dabacon.org/pontiff/?p=539]The”>http://dabacon.org/pontiff/?p=539)

Rep = Republican
Dem = Democrat
Ind = Independent/Unaffiliated

Grade school education:
23.4% Rep, 54.6% Dem, 22.5% Ind

Some High School:
22.8% Rep, 51.3% Dem, 26.0% Ind

High School Grad:
29.4% Rep, 40.5% Dem, 30.2% Ind

Some College and/or Tech:
36.0% Rep, 35.0% Dem, 29.3% Ind

College Grad:
42.0% Rep, 30.7% Dem, 27.7% Ind

Thread		Replies	Views
Simple but valid question: "so what really defines a school as liberal vs conservative?" Parent Cafe	55	210	April 14, 2021
Should conservatives get an admissions boost? Parent Cafe	105	212	April 14, 2021
To put the controversy to rest Princeton University	53	141	April 16, 2021
A variation on liberal v. conservative schools College Search & Selection	38	159	April 15, 2021
Which schools are most liberal or most conservative? College Search & Selection	151	1891	April 15, 2021

What does "Diversity" mean? Does it miss the point?

Related topics

CONNECT WITH US