Glenn Ricketts and Peter Wood, author of Diversity: The Invention of a Concept, address a topic I’ve written about: colleges considering noncognitive factors in the application process for purposes of diversity. Their focus, however, is on commitment to diversity as a requirement for admission.
Ricketts and Wood quote in “Diversi-Oaths: Creedal Admissions in the American University,” a portion of Yale University’s Common Application Online:
“A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.”
This “diversity question,” write Ricketts and Wood, “displays a remarkable intellectual slovenliness.” Considering the so-called educational benefits of skin color diversity isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not clear whether these perceived benefits bring students together or raise the quality of education. The desire for education in and of itself is what should bring students together.
Ricketts and Wood believe diversity doctrines do just the opposite: separate students. A student’s potential to diversify the campus seems to trump his individuality, and pushes students to focus on their “pre-chosen identities.”
“They know their ethnic or racial categorization, their socio-economic status, and other such characteristics matter far more to admissions offices than their actual thoughts about who they are…These ‘diversity’ essay questions are never innocent. They are a tool to keep college applicants aligned with the dominant ideology on campus, which continues to favor group categorizations over both individuality and the broader claims of shared community.”
Colleges and universities ask applicants to describe how they’ve “overcome barriers to access opportunities in higher education, evidence of how you have come to understand the barriers faced by others, evidence of your academic service to advance equitable access to higher education for women,” and so on, but what if you have no such story? What if you simply have the grades, scores, and desire to become a doctor, lawyer, or Indian chief?
The question is rhetorical, as institutions of higher education probably are overwhelmingly filled with students who don’t have hard-luck stories or aspire to socially engineer a world where everything is equal. They just want to go to school.
One unintended consequence of including diversity questions on applications is some students may feel pressured to make up or exaggerate hard-luck stories. Will pledging allegiance to skin color diversity and/or having been a victim of racial discrimination become an explicit requirement for admission?
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