The College of Arts & Sciences Dean’s Advisory Board comes to campus this week for our spring meeting; the theme of this meeting is access, diversity, and inequality. I chose this theme to discuss with our board members and guests our new CAS diversity plan and learn what they are doing to improve diversity and inclusion in their organizations, as well as to highlight faculty research on inequality. We will also hear from Laurie Pohl, professor of the practice in the School of Education and former Vice President for Enrollment and Student Affairs, about Boston University’s college access initiatives. I believe that providing inclusive access to a high quality education for a diverse population is our most important contribution to building a more just, equitable world.
Higher education serves several important purposes for individuals and society. Individuals learn skills, values, and knowledge that will enable them to flourish professionally and personally. At its best, higher education inspires curiosity and creativity, and motivates and enables people to seek answers to deep, enduring questions and solutions to grand challenges that will better their lives and society. It brings together young people from diverse ways of life and teaches them democratic attitudes and skills. These are the direct effects of higher education and they are both important social goods as well as goods for individuals.
A more cynical view of higher education is represented by Bryan Caplan, who (as I have mentioned before) argues that the main purpose of higher education for individuals is to attain a credential that signals quality, whether to a future employer or a potential mate. When it serves only this purpose, however, higher education is an individual good but a social bad. This end pits individuals against each other, and causes elites to jealously guard their advantages, and as such thwarts the other social goods education offers to society.
Equality in access and achievement is imperative to achieving these positive social and individual goals of higher education and furthering social equality. By equality, I do not mean that everyone receives the same amount of education or achieves the same outcomes. Not everyone has the same level of interest or aptitude for higher education, and there is a good case to be made for both individuals and society receiving unequal amounts based on their abilities to benefit from more and deeper formal education (after all, we need great scientists, doctors, engineers, artists, and scholars). Rather, to achieve its important purposes, education must be distributed through genuine equality of opportunity that respects persons as democratic equals, worthy of respect and equal concern. That means on a basis of non-discrimination and with an attempt to counteract earlier inequalities and unfairness in individuals’ background and exposure to early educational opportunity. If equality of opportunity is denied, then many individuals will not flourish or meet their potential for individual growth or social contribution. If only those from higher income families can attain higher education, then democratic skills will not be equally distributed and a diversity of voices will not be heard.
Inequality in access was once enforced by law and practice; racial segregation, quotas on Jews, and gender segregation were the norm (though, to our great credit, not at Boston University). This all began to change only relatively recently, about the time that I was thinking about attending college, with the Civil Rights Movement, the women’s movement, Title IX of the Higher Education Act of 1972, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. These movements and laws have made access to higher education open on a basis of formal equality of opportunity to non-whites, women, and other disadvantaged groups. But inequality in access to higher education is still common today due to income inequality, racial disparities regardless of income, and other forms of discrimination that still prevent some from competing on a level playing field for access to high-status institutions. Furthermore, even when students have an equal opportunity to arrive on campus, there are many failures of inclusion that keep them from achieving outcomes on an equal basis. The rising cost of education relative to other goods is steep and creates yet another barrier to disadvantaged populations.
Income elites, professors, and, to a greater extent, administrators are complicit in this inequality. We accept and embrace many aspects of elitism and bias that keep the system of higher education unequal, and we do little to contain the costs of education. In the competition for rankings and prestige, as well as for the substantive ingredients of a great university, such as outstanding faculty and research grants, we must either invest heavily and take every advantage or lose our status and sacrifice our ability to attract the best students and faculty. Yet, in that competition, making judgments of quality based on bias and elitist criteria is almost unavoidable.
While we cannot change some of these things unilaterally, we can take some actions. CAS’s diversity and inclusion report specifies steps we can take to build an excellent, diverse faculty. As I have written about before, we can focus on meeting need with financial aid, rather than allocating precious financial aid dollars to merit scholarships. We can commit to meeting student financial need for out-of-classroom experiential opportunities, so that all students have an equal opportunity for these critical learning experiences. We can use techniques like growth mindset training in the classroom, which especially help students who have been disadvantaged and stereotyped build confidence and hope. We can engage inclusive teaching practices and create an inclusive curriculum that makes students from underrepresented groups feel like their experiences and heritage are worthy of study. In these ways we make Boston University a good and great institution of higher learning.