A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Proceedings Report

Diversity and Outcomes in Higher Education:

A Symposium to Develop an Agenda for Research

November 22-24, 1996

Acknowledgements

These proceedings were prepared by Rose Asera, Associate Director for Research and Evaluation at the Charles A. Dana Center. Rachel Jenkins and Gregory Henschel provided editorial assistance. Thanks to Chandra Muller, Joshua Aronson, and Stacey Rosenkrantz of University of Texas at Austin, who served as reporters at the symposium and provided editorial assistance. Thanks also to Eileen O'Brien at Policy Studies Associates for preparing meeting notes and transcripts.

Introduction

This document summarizes deliberations of a symposium organized jointly by the U. S. Department of Education Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), the National Center for Postsecondary Improvement at Stanford University, and the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The symposium gathered researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and funders to discuss patterns of access to higher education by populations that historically have not had access. Adding urgency to the discussion were emerging national trends affecting access to higher education, evidenced by cases such as Hopwood v. State of Texas and United States v. Fordice, and by recent ballot measures like Proposition 209 in California and similar initiatives in other states.

The intent of the symposium was to begin crafting a research agenda to guide inquiry and to inform policy and practice for the next decade. Discussions at the symposium were grounded in what is currently known from research and in what we anticipate higher education will need to know in the face of shifts in the populations attending college, changes in financial support for higher education, and alterations in political and legal trends.

Symposium participants came from a wide array of fields, including education, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, economics, demography, history, policy, mathematics, religion, political science, institutional research, and literature. Participants included faculty, administrators, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. The symposium provided a setting for conversation among researchers from different fields and between researchers and consumers of research findings. Various individuals brought to the table the perspectives of their disciplines as well as their personal experiences. The group as a whole was searching for a theoretical framework to make the next generation of inquiry useful to the constituent audiences.

This Proceedings Report follows the organization of the symposium: two context-setting discussions followed by a distillation of research questions. The first section sets the legal context; it provides an historical overview of related legal and legislative developments that shaped policy in higher education over the last 100 years. The following section deals with another key context: definitions, i.e., it considers the concept of diversity itself. the multiple possible definitions and articulations of what diversity is, and, at the practical level, the role that diversity can play in fulfilling the mission and goals of higher education. The final section calls for research in five areas, describing a set of questions that Symposium participants believe are potentially most significant.

Historical Context: Key Moments in Desegregation
Litigation and Legislation

Mark Yudof, then Executive Vice President and Provost of the University of Texas at Austin and former Dean of its law school, helped provide a historical context by presenting an overview of the key cases affecting desegregation.

Plessy v. Ferguson. In 1896 the Supreme Court held in Plessy v. Ferguson that "separate but equal" facilities for blacks and whites did not deny any person equal protection under the law. Although this ruling applied originally to transportation, the majority cited the "common instance" of the establishment of separate schools for white and black children as evidence of the soundness of their decision. This dictum hardened into settled law.

Sweatt v. Painter. In 1950 the Supreme Court decided the case Sweatt v. Painter, which had been brought by Hemann Sweatt, an African American who was qualified to attend the law school at the University of Texas, but who was denied admission because of his race. In response to Sweatt's lawsuit, the state of Texas established an all-black law school in Houston and argued that he could attend that school. The Supreme Court found not only tangible inequalities between the two schools, but also "intangible" inequalities in prestige, faculty reputation, and administration. Ultimately the Supreme Court ordered his acceptance to the University of Texas School of Law. This was the beginning of judicial acceptance of the idea that racially separate treatment in education is inherently unequal.

Brown v. Board of Education. In its 1954 ruling in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court declared that racial segregation in schools is inherently unequal and unconstitutional.

Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VI of this legislation placed the federal government in the role of requiring the desegregation of public schools and universities because the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited the use of federal funds by institutions-including colleges and universities-that discriminated on the basis of race.

Adams v. Richardson. In 1970 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense and Education Fund-acting on behalf of several African American students-sued the federal government for not fulfilling its duties under the Civil Rights Act. As a result of the Adams case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to take appropriate action to end segregation in institutions of higher education that accept federal funds. Texas was one of the original ten states charged with maintaining dual systems of higher education. As part of the federal government's oversight of the implementation by Texas of its desegregation plan, the government recommended that professional schools reevaluate their admissions criteria and "admit black and Hispanic students who demonstrate potential for success but who do not necessarily meet all the traditional admission requirements."

Recent Cases Affecting Access to Higher Education

Yudof continued his presentation on the legal contexts for examining diversity in higher education by describing recent cases affecting student access to higher education.

University of California Regents v. Bakke. The Supreme Court's 1978 Bakke decision found that the affirmative action plan at the University of California at Davis violated the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause because that university's medical school established quotas for minority applicants. It found that Bakke, a denied white applicant, was entitled to admission. However, Justice Lewis Powell, the swing vote on a divided court, concluded that while quotas were unconstitutional, race could still be considered in the admissions process. Powell adopted the view that "obtaining the educational benefits of an ethnically diverse student body" justified taking race and ethnicity into account. This view was not based on remedying present effects of past discrimination; rather it articulated a new justification that was based on the positive educational effects of diversity. Though he had an antipathy for quotas, Powell indicated that race may be a "plus" in the complex process by which candidates of all races are compared with each other. The Bakke decision has since been at the crux of public debates about affirmative action.

Hopwood v. Texas. After unsuccessfully applying for admission to the 1992 entering class at the University of Texas School of Law, four white applicants subsequently filed a suit in district court claiming that they were victims of unconstitutional reverse discrimination and that they would have been admitted but for the school's affirmative action policies. In what came to be known as the Hopwood case, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the 1992 admissions plan was unconstitutional. Further, it held that virtually any consideration of race and ethnicity in the admissions process was unconstitutional.

In the Hopwood appeals decision, the Fifth Circuit Court rejected arguments about remedying past discrimination, unless it was discrimination by the institution, and about the inherent value of diversity. The court found no "recent history of overt sanctioned discrimination at the University of Texas," and ruled that any history of discrimination at the elementary and secondary educational levels was too far removed from higher education to justify the affirmative action plan. In regard to diversity, Judge Jerry Smith, writing for the majority noted "The use of race, in and of itself, to choose students simply achieves a student body that looks different. Such a criterion is no more rational on its own terms than would be choices based upon the physical size or blood type of applicants."

Commentary on the Hopwood Case

The Hopwood decision effectively negates race and ethnicity-based affirmative action for purposes of diversity in states under the jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit Court. Mark Yudof, Provost at the University of Texas, summed up his sense of the consequences of the court's decision for higher education. Yudof stated that the effects of the Hopwood case and Proposition 209 could have immediate impact on minority access to higher education. He stated that the Hopwood decision will have a devastating impact on enrollment at the University of Texas, in terms of diversity. For example, minority students could go to Oklahoma, Illinois, or other states.

Sociologists among the symposium participants pointed out that stratified societies tend to reproduce that stratification within their institutions and agencies. In the United States, affirmative action was a direct legal attempt to reverse the historic stratification based on race and ethnicity in certain settings. Even strong proponents of affirmative action admit its limitations as a solution. Yet there is surprisingly little data publicly available as to how effective-or ineffective-affirmative action has been in reducing that stratification and in increasing access and improving educational outcomes for all students.

Further complicating the issue of affirmative action in admissions is the fact that its opponents tend to focus on race-preferential admissions policies and disregard other factors. For example, public discussion of the Hopwood case rarely mentions the fact that 109 non-minority applicants were admitted to the 1992 class of the University of Texas law school with weighted grades and test scores that were lower than those of Cheryl Hopwood. That number is larger than the entire number of African-American and Hispanic students admitted to the law school that year. These arguments about race and admissions all too often obscure a much larger issue: the number of qualified students applying to all selective public universities has dramatically increased over the last ten to fifteen years, while the number of openings has not.

Judith Winston, General Counsel and Acting Under Secretary for the U.S. Department of Education, brought to these issues both a lawyer's training and a policymaker's eye. Her commentary underscored the complexity behind questions of affirmative action and access to higher education. "One of the reasons controversial court cases such as Hopwood continue to threaten colleges and universities is that the nation has never resolved the inherent contradictions about race and opportunity set even in the Constitution. We declared that all men are created equal, yet we counted some individuals as only three-fifths of a person. We constructed a set of myths and stereotypes of inferiority, incapacity, and untrustworthiness as part of an attempt to live with the contradictions we set out for ourselves at the beginning. There are those who believe that no use of race is justifiable. They suggest that there is no such thing as discrimination against minorities, and that there is the belief that the tables have been turned and the white males are being discriminated against."

Diversity as a Compelling Interest in Higher Education

One of the traditional missions of higher education has been to serve the greater society by fostering the cognitive growth of students and by preparing them for civic responsibilities and the world of work. Higher education also has an obligation to serve local and professional communities and a responsibility to contribute to the local and national economy. Does diversity contribute to the educational mission of higher education? Is achieving a diverse university student and faculty community a compelling interest for the university?

Symposium participants brought many different perspectives, experiences, and visions to these questions; however, at least two major themes emerged. One theme grew out of history and the quest for social justice: it described diversity as a key issue in higher education because of the history of past discrimination and the longstanding struggles for desegregation. The other theme grew out of contemporary demographics and developing trends: it acknowledged the increasing diversity of our population and the consequent need to envision and learn to live in a society that celebrates the value of varying cultural perspectives. While many symposium participants embraced both themes, and while the themes are not inherently contradictory, participants recognized that in practice they could imply different courses of action. It was in the symposium discussion that the complexity and poignancy of the interactions between the issues of race and the broader issues of diversity emerged.

Eugene Lowe, Jr., Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs at Northwestern University, confronted directly the difficulties of talking about diversity and the historical reasons for affirmative action. "It seems excruciatingly difficult for Americans to tackle diversity directly, because of the burden of race, particularly as it affects blacks, and I think secondarily, at least historically, Hispanic Americans. A large number of Americans feel that we have spent too much time using affirmative action strategies. We cannot come to a consensus in this society about how much we have to do to overcome the burden of history. And I'm not persuaded that we can organize the social consensus to support affirmative action if we say directly that we've got to deal with the burden of race in America. Therefore, as we move forward, it will be necessary to develop and gain support for policies and programs that address affirmative action without stigmatizing underrepresented minorities or institutionalizing approaches that will incur resentments of other groups."

Discussions at the symposium also touched upon the issues particular to Asian-Americans, who are well represented in higher education, but only in a few fields such as the physical sciences and engineering. May Chen, Director of Research and Planning at the Los Angeles Community College District pointed out that: "Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have borne the burden of race both historically and recently they have been entirely ignored. These people are never considered as whites, but are often excluded from participating in most diversity-related programs that have been designed only for blacks and/or Hispanics. As the representation of Asians has tripled in higher education in recent years, it is time to include them in diversity."

Other Symposium participants noted the inseparability of the two issues-race and diversity- but highlighted the potential subterfuge in avoiding issues of race in favor of diversity; i.e., "diversity" can be used as a euphemism to discuss race and ethnicity without understanding or acknowledging the burden of history, the social fact that oppression and racism is still part of the reality of our institutions.

Amidst differing perspectives on diversity, a practical question appeared central -- is diversity a compelling interest for higher education? If yes, how so? By and large, symposium participants believed that such a compelling interest exists, and for a number of reasons. One such reason is cultural authority. If the university is to maintain its prominence and status in society as a whole, then the populace must trust the knowledge and authority of that institution. Claude Steele, a social psychologist at Stanford University who has studied the effects of stereotypes on student achievement, spoke to this point. "A lack of diversity means there won't be cultural authority. I remember the feeling of disconnectedness that I felt while watching the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings; we had this white male body adjudicating this case. Implicit to that was, do these people really have the authority to adjudicate this? Do they have the diversity to have the kind of authority our common culture would like to have? Similarly a friend of mine is a dean and is hiring a group of associate deans. That group should be diverse. If he has a homogeneous group, it's going to detract from his authority to run an institution that is diverse."

A second reason that symposium participants found diversity to be a compelling interest for higher education was that the university has a mandate to prepare students to function in the larger society, and society is becoming increasingly diverse. Higher education should prepare students to participate in the democratic process and to assume civic responsibility in the society in which they will live. Higher education therefore should create situations in which students have the opportunity to engage with and understand differences (as well as commonalties) in a variety of peoples and cultures. This is not just a question of ethnic or cultural "enrichment" for students but is instead a serious need to help prepare all students to live in an increasingly ethnically, racially, and culturally diverse future.

In summary, conference participants found many purposes for diversity in higher education. And each of these purposes suggests avenues for research. Participants generally agreed on a critical need for the higher education research community to gather information about the current state of practice regarding diversity in higher education, and to study the effects of those practices on all students, of all racial and cultural backgrounds. Such clearly presented research would allow policymakers and practitioners in higher education to make conscious policy decisions based on sound evidence, rather than on impressions, assumptions, or ideologies.

Research Issues

Past Efforts and Their Legacy

To date research on diversity in higher education has focused primarily on the institutional factors that support or impede success-persistence in college and attainment of a degree by groups of students who had previously been excluded from or underrepresented in higher education. To some extent this is the legacy of the research that came after school desegregation. But the literature from that period offers little guidance regarding contemporary issues of diversity in higher education. The work of social scientists had contributed to the 1954 school desegregation decision. These scientists generally believed that desegregation would greatly benefit minority students and, at the very least, would not harm white students. In the twenty-five years after the decision, studies on school desegregation revealed equivocal consequences (e.g., St. John, 1975; Stephan, 1978). Though it was shown that desegregation had no ill effects on the school performance of white students, research showed that minority students generally failed to reap the expected benefits in academic achievement. As for the effects of desegregation on student attitudes about members of different ethnic and racial groups, here too, the research showed mixed results. These results can be attributed to various factors, such as the white middle class "flight" out of the cities.

Therefore, as symposium participants came together to construct an agenda for future research, they were simultaneously highly cognizant of the limitations of past research and of the increasingly complex contemporary research needs in this arena. They knew that policymakers and the broader public need research that helps explain the institutional strategic choices that have been made thus far to increase diversity on American campuses and the effects of those choices. For example, different campuses have chosen one or more starting points for increasing diversity. These have ranged from reconstructing the curriculum to be more inclusive and multicultural, to devoting resources to developing minority faculty, to attending to multicultural issues as a part of student life.

Major funders, including most prominently the Ford Foundation, Philip Morris Companies, Inc., the Eli Lilly Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, and others have supported several of these campus strategies. Many of these programs have been evaluated. (See, for example, Musil's 1995 study of nineteen campuses affiliated with the Ford Foundation initiative; Sedlacek's 1995 evaluation of thirty campuses funded by Eli Lilly to improve the campus climate for diversity; and Nettles and Hudgins's 1995 report on the Philip Morris project on tolerance on campus.) However, as noted in the Association of American Colleges and Universities' Impact of Diversity on Students, a Preliminary Review of the Research Literature, "these studies provide more compelling information about institutional change than about student impact, on which less evidence is currently available." (Appel, Cartwright, Smith and Wolf, 1996 Association of American Colleges and Universities, The Impact of Diversity on Students, a Preliminary Review of the Research Literature (p. 13).)

Priorities for Research

The research agenda that emerged from this symposium is a set of issues that needs a stronger, broader evidentiary base. Higher education policymakers and practitioners need research that critically examines the state of existing intentional (chosen) and situational (given) practices that

• affect student access to higher education,
• shape the character of institutional life, and
• define the measures of success across institutions of higher education.

Research is also needed to define and assess the outcomes of these practices in different settings. Policymakers and practitioners need broad-based data that allow researchers to shed light on the major issues in sweeping terms. And they need fine-grained data that can inform local decisionmaking. The symposium concluded that we need studies across institutions that help us understand the impact of various practices in the following domains, each of which is described in greater detail in the remainder of this report.

Issue 1. Access to higher education, including sub-issues: admissions criteria; socioeconomic status; and the relationship of higher education to K- 12 education

Issue 2. Undergraduate instructional issues, including sub-issues: curriculum; faculty; and classroom environment

Issue 3. Undergraduate life and multiethnic engagement, including sub-issues: campus climate; and student support programs

Issue 4. Future faculty development, including sub-issues: minority students in graduate school

Issue 5. Institutional outcomes

Cautionary Notes

As a prelude to the discussion of the five topics, two general cautionary statements from symposium participants should be remembered.

• Much as diversity in higher education cannot be studied without looking at the historical and philosophical contexts of diversity in society, higher education's varying contexts and definitions must also be explicitly described. Even practitioners in the various strata of higher education recognize that when people discuss "higher education," they are most often talking about the elite, selective private liberal arts colleges or public research universities. These institutions of higher education, because of their status, have historically had an aura of exclusivity and have been seen as sources of social and national leaders. Moreover, it is these elite institutions that have most often tried to address issues of improving student diversity through special programs and affirmative action. In contrast, other sectors of higher education-such as community colleges and, to some extent, comprehensive universities-have student bodies that have historically been determined by inclusion and access. As we shape a research agenda on diversity in higher education, we must, therefore, think carefully about when findings from one sector of higher education will (or will not) inform practice in other sectors. Furthermore, where nominal access has existed -- for example, at community colleges and many comprehensives -- studies need to be conducted in order to determine the true evidence of minority access and success. Otherwise, these sectors may have revolving doors for many minority students.

• Sylvia Hurtado, who has extensively studied Latino students and campus climate, provided the second caution. "I've come to the conclusion that we develop these wonderful research questions, but there are no simple answers to any single one of them. What we're doing is uncovering greater and greater complexity-complexity of human experience, interaction, student adaptation to diversity, to a whole range of issues where there are no quick answers. So I worry when policymakers say, 'What is the contribution of having diversity? Let us know right now."'

Issue 1. Access to Higher Education

Admissions Criteria

Admissions is of course an obvious and key gatekeeper for access to higher education and is often the focus of campus programs related to access. But symposium participants acknowledged that any discussion of access limited only to admissions is shortsighted and incomplete. Although procedures for selecting and admitting students play a crucial role, any thorough examination of access must include issues such as the role of K- 12 education in preparing students for college, and the success those students have in persisting at and graduating from the university. Research on access to higher education is meaningless unless it includes data on success rates in obtaining an education and a degree (not just on obtaining access to the freshman year). Such research will also be meaningless if admissions criteria for transfers from 2- and 4-year institutions are totally ignored.

Another concern is the fact that recruitment efforts aimed at minority students are often housed in special programs outside of academic departments, and are administratively separated from the academic life of the institution. Thus counting numbers of minority students admitted only reflects the success of the recruitment campaign, not the strength of any institutional commitment to diversity.

Further complicating issues of access is the fact that over the past decade, public opposition to affirmative action programs and policies has grown. Some of this opposition can be traced to a growing feeling that these programs and policies displace selection policies based on merit. In particular, a large portion of the public believes that college and university admissions policies should be based solely on merit, without regard to race and ethnicity.

At the symposium it was noted that in discussions of this issue by the general public, "merit" is almost always equated with standardized test scores. Many of the standardized tests measure important basic skills; but clearly by their nature, they cannot measure the possible range of strengths in a student. Yet in some cases, extremely small differences in scores can have tremendous consequences for a given student. For example, a difference of five points on a standardized test may determine who gets services or fellowships.

Although standardized tests are now perceived as a potential obstacle for some minority populations, earlier in our nation's history, testing programs were seen as a way to enable certain groups to overcome patronage and favoritism and gain access to higher education and to high-status jobs. Forty years ago standardized tests were a way of "leveling" the playing field.

Symposium participants recognized that to recruit a more diverse student population, the concept of merit should be reexamined and defined on more bases than just standardized test scores. A broader and more complex set of criteria for merit is needed that addresses the varying strengths, talents, and capacities that students might bring to higher education. One recommendation is an opportunity formula- a structure for assessing a student merit based on student capacity to utilize the opportunity that higher education affords.

Socioeconomic Status

Beyond test scores and selection criteria, socioeconomic status is another key factor affecting admissions and enrollment in higher education. And it is extremely difficult to untangle the interactions of race and socioeconomic status and how these factors affect opportunity. Data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) show that minority students are more likely than white students to need and receive financial aid. In 1992-93, 13 percent of dependent African-American students and 14 percent of dependent Hispanic students came from families with annual incomes of $ 10,000 or less, as compared with only 4 percent of dependent white students. Not surprisingly then, 59 percent of dependent African-American students and 45 percent of dependent Hispanic students received some type of student financial aid, compared with 39 percent of dependent white students.

Similarly, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status interact to affect the level of opportunity available to students, including what K- 12 schools they are able to attend. For example, policy researcher Gary Orfield's study in Chicago found that middle-class African-American and Hispanic families are more likely to live in communities with poor families than were white middle-class families. Living in poorer neighborhoods, with less-well-funded schools, shapes students' academic preparation for college. Student opportunity to learn in higher education is impaired when they have not had that opportunity in K- 12 education.

Relationship of Higher Education to K-12 Education

Most efforts by institutions of higher education to connect to K- 12 education have been through outreach, marketing, recruitment, and fine-tuning of admissions criteria. If the mandates of affirmative action are removed, and higher education is, in fact, committed to a diverse student body, it will need to support and strengthen K-12 education so that there is a broader, more diverse pool of qualified students. In too many ways, higher education has been disconnected from K- 12 education. As much as there is an emerging rhetoric of a K-16 continuum, such a continuum does not exist in many places.

Research questions:

• What other measures of student "merit" have been used beyond standardized test scores and how effectively do they predict student success? What mix of factors predicts student success at what types of institutions?

• What have been the effects of establishing alternative procedures for campus-wide admissions?

• For campuses that have admitted students based on differing admissions criteria, what are the patterns of persistence and achievement, in particular for students admitted via affirmative action or alternative methods?

• What would be the effects of various combinations and weightings of admissions variables on student body make up?

• How would specific changes in financial-aid policy affect enrollment in different sectors of higher education?

• How effective are campus-outreach practices and school/college collaborations? What are the determinants and indicators of successful programs?

• What are the interactions between race and socioeconomic status that affect college attendance and completion? What intervention strategies can successfully mediate such factors?

• What have community colleges and comprehensive institutions done that is effective at ensuring minority student success.

• How have 2- and 4-year institutions collaborated to facilitate minority transfers?

• How do institutions define student diversity? Does the definition use race in addition to other factors? Is race the primary factor?

• Do institutions define the need for racial diversity on their campus based on the racial composition of a particular geographical area? If so, how is the effective service area of the institution defined?

• Do campus diversity policies assume that there is an effective "critical mass" of students from a particular group, as needed for those students to feel comfortable on campus?

Issue 2: Undergraduate Instructional Issues

Curriculum

Initial efforts to increase diversity were focused on students via recruitment efforts and special retention programs. But there is a growing realization that to create truly diverse institutions, the institutions themselves must change. This raises questions of how curriculum and faculty contribute to a more diverse institution.

Recent efforts to change institutional practices regarding diversity have been accompanied by major developments in scholarship, curriculum, and teaching, particularly in fields such as women's and ethnic studies. As many as 30 percent of colleges and universities now require "diversity" or multicultural courses as part of their general educational requirements; these often include the study of "non-western" cultures, a United States racial or ethnic minority culture, or women's studies. These courses are meant to influence attitudes and knowledge and to demonstrate institutional commitment to minority students. A preliminary review of research on diversity from multiple studies done in the early 1990s (Association of American Colleges and Universities) concludes that such courses influence not only attitudes, but also skills, knowledge, and cognitive development.

Yet another facet of the curriculum that is relevant here is the content-area courses that overlap K- 12 and higher education. An example would be college-level pre-calculus, a course typically designed for students who may not have had sufficient mathematics preparation in high school. Often such prerequisite courses are described as vehicles to improve access to mathematics, science, and technical majors, but critical examination reveals that such courses may have the opposite effect. Research at the University of Texas at Austin on enrollment in precalculus and subsequent courses found that even good grades in precalculus did not assure student success in subsequent mathematics courses (Ruddock, 1996); moreover, minority students are disproportionately enrolled in such courses.

Faculty

Faculty attitudes of course influence the development and effectiveness of curriculum. Symposium participants noted that frequently, faculty members support affirmative action in the abstract, but did not necessarily support specific affirmative action programs. In some of the places where faculty have become engaged in developing diversity curricula, the topic had to be linked to faculty priorities. For example, faculty attitudes changed during the University of California at Berkeley debate on its American Culture curriculum. When the debate was cast in ideological terms, there was significant faculty resistance. Yet once the curriculum was translated into a set of academic interests to be incorporated into the American Culture seminar (with a focus across racial and ethnic groups), the faculty figured out a way to design the courses.

It is also important in examining the role of faculty in institutional change to consider the potential benefits that would derive from a more diverse faculty. The wealth of perspectives brought by individuals of different backgrounds may contribute to and shape the academic disciplines over time.

Classroom Environment

By and large, symposium participants believed that- based as much on experiences and observations as on research- multiethnic engagement in the classroom around substantive content-area tasks is a powerful tool for supporting the cognitive development of all students. Such classroom settings provide an opportunity for students to interact, to share their struggles and satisfactions, and to comprehend their individual similarities and differences within the context of an academic subject. There is anecdotal evidence that students of all ethnicities who take part in such learning communities not only do better in school, but are more likely to persist in difficult fields and to remain at the university. A well-known example of this dynamic is the Emerging Scholars Program (ESP), a multiethnic honors-level program for freshmen calculus students currently in place in some 100 colleges and universities across the country. ESP provides students with a mathematically rich environment and helps them develop a community life focused on their shared intellectual interests and common professional goals. Research on ESP classrooms has demonstrated the efficacy of building basic mathematical skills- a task too often delegated to remedial courses-in a rigorous, challenging academic setting.

Research Questions:

• A number of campuses have been involved in developing scholarly research around issues of diversity. What evidence exists about the impact on students' cognitive growth? Does the process of participating in changing the curriculum affect faculty views?

• How does the institutional reward system (including tenure) on various campuses support or discourage the involvement of faculty in diversity initiatives, including curriculum?

• Does participation of researchers from diverse backgrounds contribute to strengthening the research and knowledge base in a specific academic field? If so how?

• Does a diverse student body require a more complex or varied pedagogical approaches from faculty?

• What are the determinants and indicators of multiethnic engagement in the classroom? Does multiethnic engagement in the classroom contribute to all students' cognitive skills? If so, in what ways?

Issue 3: Undergraduate Life

Campus Climate

Campus climate, as one of the factors that shapes the experience of student life, exists within and beyond the classroom. When students come to a campus, campus climate is the intangible that affects whether or not they feel welcome and comfortable. Campus administrations attempting to meet their mandates for diversity have developed a number of formal structures that, de facto, contribute to campus climate. Over the last three decades, campuses across the country have established programs specifically aimed at recruiting and retaining designated populations of minority students.

Student Support Programs

Because of the political nature of these concerns, this responsibility has most often fallen to campus administrations, rather than academic departments. This tendency in turn has affected the nature and character of the programs. Uri Treisman, professor of mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin and originator of the Emerging Scholars Program, commented on one of the contradictions he encountered early in his research. "Almost all minority programs are isomorphic, no matter what kind of campus they are on. Minority retention programs at Berkeley were exactly the same as those at a community college in nearby Oakland. Same mission, same job descriptions; they were even both housed in temporary buildings.

This is a statement of their marginality within the institution. We need measures of how these programs are linked to the campus missions."

Historically, most of the academic programs established to serve minority students were based on student-deficit models; they had a remedial focus. The outcomes from such retention programs were somewhat problematic. Elaine Seymour, a sociologist at the University of Colorado, studied student persistence in and attrition from the sciences (with N. Hewitt, Talking about Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave The Sciences, 1997). The study points out a contradiction in the outcomes of these minority retention programs. Over three-quarters of the minority students who left the sciences reported that they received inadequate support-either from existing programs or because institutional resources were lacking. Their need for such assistance was, however, strongly evidenced: without exception, every minority student who stayed in the original science, mathematics, and engineering majors reported that some type of program assistance had been critical to their survival.

The assumptions underlying the development of retention programs to support a diverse student population may undermine the efficacy of their efforts. If campuses treat all students of similar ethnic or racial background the same, the needs of the individual- and even of subgroups of students with different needs-will be lost.

A recent review of retention programs at the University of Michigan noted multiple student needs that programs can address. Students coming to a large impersonal university need a place that is "home" -somewhere to meet people, build community around shared interests, and feel "safe." Nearly all freshmen have this need to shrink the large anonymous environment to a human scale. This need can be even more acute for minority students on predominantly white campuses. Many of the programs that build a sense of home do so first around commonality of race or culture. But the most effective programs reach beyond -they build paths and bridges across to the university, to faculty, and to departments. Such programs support students in their efforts to explore and use the range of university resources and to feel at home in a variety of university settings.

Research questions:

• What are the major determinants of a campus climate that is perceived by all students as welcoming?

• What do we know about successful intervention programs and successful or unsuccessful efforts at their dissemination?

• To what extent do the effects of such practices and interventions differ for various subpopulations for students?

• Where are successful intervention and retention programs housed in various universities? What factors contribute to the marginalization or centrality of diversity programs on a campus? How are student support efforts connected (if at all) with academic departments?

• How does the experience of multiethnic engagement in the classroom and across the campus influence students' learning, cognitive development, and worldviews?

Issue 4: Graduate Participation and Faculty Development

A future with diversity in all fields depends upon successful graduate student recruitment and graduation. Also, since faculty at non-elite institutions are often educated at elite institutions, if there is to be a diverse faculty across higher education, the commitment of the elite graduate institutions is essential.

Michael Nettles, Professor at the University of Michigan, noted that while in 1994-95, African Americans and Hispanics constituted 6 percent and 3 percent, respectively, of students enrolled in graduate school, they represented only 3 percent and 2 percent, respectively, of doctoral degree recipients. African Americans received less than 2 percent of the doctoral degrees each year in physical sciences, and less than 3 percent in the life sciences and humanities. Similarly, Hispanics received around 3 percent of the doctoral degrees in the life sciences and 4 percent in the humanities, 2 percent in engineering, and 4 percent in education and 3 percent in the physical sciences. Even though African Americans received 9 percent of the doctoral degrees in education annually, the majority appeared to be practitioners who were upgrading their credentials rather than emerging faculty and researchers. Despite efforts by leading graduate institutions, many have made little improvement in the numbers of doctorates received by African Americans and Hispanics made in the last decade and a half.

Research questions:

• What are the determinants of minority student enrollment in graduate programs?

• What financial factors influence minority student application for, enrollment in, and completion of graduate programs?

• What institutional policies and programs have led to growth in the number of graduate degrees, especially in the sciences, earned by minority students?

• What is the overall experience of minority students in graduate school? How does mentoring by faculty influence this?

Issue 5: Institutional Outcomes

The symposium participants maintained a commitment to increasing diversity in higher education. The participants identified the following outcomes as operational measures of success.

• student enrollment and retention rates, disaggregated by ethnicity and gender;

• student graduation rates, disaggregated by major and by ethnicity and gender;

• graduate school attendance, retention, and degree completion, disaggregated by ethnicity and gender;

• significant reduction to eradication of the gap in educational attainment by ethnicity;

• successful production of a diverse workforce;

• contributions beyond higher education by minority professionals in chosen fields, and growth of the fields as a result of diversity;

• determinants of institutions that have successfully become more diverse in student population, staff, and faculty.

The symposium ended with a strong call for two major categories of research:

1. Large-scale quantitative studies across institutions, linked to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) databases. NCES could use its prominence and visibility in the institutional research community to encourage that community to gather and compile data that would permit cross-institutional comparisons. In addition, NCES could establish vertical connections between its surveys (e.g., between NELS and NPSAS). NCES is a major resource for data. Their portfolio of databases includes data collected in various large-scale surveys focused on postsecondary education. NCES resources could help answer questions such as: "What are the rates of entry into postsecondary education? Are choices of institution-types limited for certain students? Where are they going? Why are they going there?" There are several recent NCES reports that might be pertinent to the issues discussed: How Low-Income Undergraduates Financed Postsecondary Education: 1992-93; Characteristics of Students Who Borrow to Finance their Postsecondary Education; Minority Undergraduate Participation in Postsecondary Education,- Profile of Older Undergraduates; Undergraduates who Work While Enrolled in Postsecondary Education: 1989-90; and Access to Postsecondary Education of Low-Income and Racial Minority 1992 High School Graduates.

2. Qualitative case studies that describe the experiences of various participants on campus, including students of all ethnicities, as well as faculty and administrators at institutions of higher education that have acted intentionally to increase diversity on their campuses. One source of such stories is the "fugitive" literature--evaluation reports, usually not published, done of innovative programs.

General Recommendations for Research

Symposium participants offered the following set of general recommendations for the next generation of research:

• Report research in terms that are easily understood by various audiences (policymakers, the courts, legislators and the general public);

• Ensure that research does not overemphasize highly selective institutions and that it examines all types of higher education institutions;

• Utilize the rich databases of NCES to the fullest extent;

• Recognize the inherent difficulties in the fabricated categorizations of minority versus majority; and understand the ways in which categorization can become an impediment to participation or achievement;

• Encourage interdisciplinary research (e.g., pairing sociology with psychology on issues such as attribution);

• Coordinate the disparate work being done by various agencies on related issues (for example, identify and link the programs that can inform each other, such as the work being done by AAC&U and NCES: and strengthen the networks and information flow).

Furthermore, participants of the symposium stated that ongoing attention needs to be directed to fostering new and useful approaches to research on diversity. And many of the questions that are most critical may require multi- and inter-disciplinary approaches.

Conference Participants