Abstract
As a young teacher, I was told that what happens in schools now will happen in universities in a generation’s time. In our modern era of compulsory education in developed societies, schools have long been the natural home of diversity, as they reflect almost exactly the diverse population of their communities – with perhaps the exception being communities built around boarding schools. Therefore, it is natural to suppose that diversity in school education has been understood for many years. Those born, in some contexts, in the 1960s and 1970s especially will have experienced this rise in diversity first hand. They will have seen communities shift and school populations change.
In my own lifetime, I have seen English, North American and Emirati cities diversify in the institutions with which I have been associated. I have seen the growth of ethnic diversity, the inclusion of students with disabilities in mainstream schools, and the shrinking of special schools and single sex schools. With the increase in secularism, I have seen schools rapidly reflecting religious pluralism. I have even seen my half-English-half-Cypriot niece become part of the first intake of girls to enter the sixth form of an all-boys school: she was one of two girls in its intake. I believe that most of these changes enriched my experience as a student and teacher, although they could also cause tensions in classrooms, in schools and in the broader community. Importantly, I have also experienced the growing feeling of exclusion of existing populations arising from these changes.
The story of diversity throughout the twentieth century can also be read through the laws that encoded a right to education for all, as the first national laws were passed over a hundred years ago. In the latter half of the twentieth century these laws became internationalised and, consequently, what we now understand as equality has become normalised in many developed countries. For instance, the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights stated that education is among our most basic rights. UNESCO’s Salamanca Statement (1994) also developed the rights of children with disabilities and other forms of special needs to a full and comprehensive education. Now, diversity is also a growing issue in the universities of developed countries.
It is against this backdrop that Daryl G Smith wrote in 2009 the first edition of Diversity’s Promise for Higher Education: Making It Work. Smith’s first book attempted to define the state of play within the field of diversity in higher education, and presented evidence of the latest trends in diversity. However, such books are notoriously difficult to leave for too long, as with shifting populations and shifting international issues their examples and definitions are subject to rapid change. In response to this change, the second edition of Diversity’s Promise for Higher Education was published in 2015, with updated figures and a nuanced reflection of population shifts.
As in the 2009 edition, in this second edition Smith argues that previous prejudices not only determine unfairness and social injustices; they also continue to undermine the foundations of our modern civilization. In this persuasive argument, Smith finds that diversity also leads to efficiency in the workforce: the workforce is more productive if it is working towards its full capacity, and exclusion or emphasis of one section of the workforce at the expense of another leads to slackness in the system. Consequently, with a more diverse workforce in high production industries and professions comes higher tax revenues; this has the additional advantage that educated people are less likely to be dependent on the state for benefits or other forms of welfare. Higher education is also unique amongst institutions in defining cultural knowledge, and how such knowledge is created and defined. Therefore, the more diverse and culturally ‘rich’ our student and academic bodies, the more diverse and rich is our cultural knowledge. However, as Smith notes, higher education is still the preserve of the elite. It is therefore most at risk of being ‘un-diverse’.
Diversity’s Promise for Higher Education is set out in four sections. The first section develops the context of diversity and its origins in political movements and the writing of the twentieth and twenty first centuries, and builds a case for diversity in higher education now. The second section discusses the framework that is the centrepiece of the book. This framework highlights the need for diversity to be systemic, from the recruitment of staff to the recruitment of students, and from the development of a diverse syllabus – fewer dead white men – to the nature of assessment and social aspects of the student body. The third section shows the data behind the framework and the empirical framing of the case for diversity. In this section, Smith makes the case that diversity is about ‘interrupting the usual’. This phrase provides a handy reframing of diversity in a higher education context. In the fourth and final section, Smith develops a long-term case for diversity in higher education systems, including proposals for evaluating how diverse such systems are. The fourth section also proposes conclusions and ways forward in higher education systems.
There are positive points to Diversity’s Promise for Higher Education. To start with, Smith writes with a fluidity that makes its arguments easy to follow. The structure of the book is logical, and the literature is interrogated thoroughly. Smith is without doubt amongst the foremost experts in the field of diversity in the US higher education system. There are also interesting theoretical elements to this book. For me, Smith’s most interesting theory is that diversity is analogous to the introduction of information technology (IT) in universities. Smith describes how at first IT was thought to be peripheral to the work of universities but, as it has evolved, IT is now central to the running of these institutions. IT now supports learning, is the main repository of administration, and is a tool of student recruitment and teaching. IT has also changed recruitment policies in universities, and teams of support staff oversee its running and application. Knowledge of, and training in, IT has also become a condition of recruitment for higher education staff. In short, universities could no longer function without IT, and the same should be true of diversity. The book also contains an interesting discussion on the sociological and psychological theories of identity. Chapter 2 especially shows the interplay between our individual cultural identities and elements of our behaviour and how these cultural identities change because of modern trends in population change and ethical shifts. Smith’s limited but important coverage of our notions of gender identity and dysmorphia are particularly interesting.
However, there are also three significant problems with this book, the first of which is that its understanding of diversity is not at all diverse. Arguably, the book also has a rather stereotypical understanding of diversity, as the great majority of discussion is on ethnicity alone. And of the ethnicities discussed, by far the greatest amount of discussion is on the African American population, followed by the US Latino population. There is talk of gender, but rather less frequently, and this is related largely to exclusion and oppression rather than to gender diversity. There is also little talk of the LGBT community, although as noted above there is a good discussion of our growing understanding of gender dysmorphia. For me, however, what was most frustrating was the relatively little discussion on disability and social class. The working-class population is surely the largest social group worldwide, and alongside people with disabilities it is certainly the most excluded social group from university education. There was also little understanding of retention in universities of people with disabilities, which is a significant problem. The book also shows little understanding of intra-cultural diversity within the communities that Smith discusses at length. Although there is some mention of intra-cultural diversity in the discussion in Chapter 3, when statistics are presented in later chapters it is assumed that these communities are homogenous – there is little disaggregation of data. There is also no discussion of regionalism and regionality within education.
The book’s second problem is that, although it claims to be international, there is little evidence of this in its research. To begin with, the issues relating to the diversity it discusses are largely relevant to the US alone – its examples are almost entirely related to the US, with only a handful coming from elsewhere. This is an important area of weakness in such a book, as different countries have different cultural interpretations of diversity. For instance, how do these examples play out in China or Japan, where diversity may be less related to international ethnic communities? In China’s case especially, diversity may be more related to internal ethnicities. Similarly, how do these examples relate to the complex ethnic-political context of South Africa? This book does little to acknowledge different political systems, where US issues of diversity may be unimportant.
The book’s third problem is its lack of understanding of universities as part of a broader society, rather than as a reflection of the broader society. For example, there is little discussion on the causes of a lack of diversity because of school education, and the lack of achievement that causes reduced university attendance. Smith also does not appear to see university communities – their students, graduates and academics – as privileged communities in themselves. She also makes some statements that appear to show neo-colonial, nationalist and historically inaccurate claims that let down her greater case for social equality. For example, early in the book Smith states that “In the eyes of the world, the credibility of the United States as the longest existing democracy is linked to its record on issues of equality and justice” (p.11). Apart from the United States’ well-known and internationally criticised history of slavery, segregation, colonisation and suppression of first nations people, it is far from the first experiment in national democracy.
Despite these limitations, there is still much to recommend Diversity’s Promise for Higher Education. This book should be of interest to scholars of higher education looking to examine a case study of the US university system. It may also be of interest to university administrators concerned with developing a diversity framework in their institutions. Furthermore, although it may not have universal practical interest, the data presented in the book can be seen in the context of having epistemological value as a study of US higher education at this particular moment in time.