Diversity and Inclusion in Higher Education

Emerging perspectives on institutional transformation

Daryl G. Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317754879
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In addition to many other issues that touch higher education around the world, diversity and equity in higher education is fast becoming a major opportunity and challenge to institutions, countries and regions. The increasing centrality of diversity is fueled in part by changing demographics, immigration, social movements, calls for remedies to historic grievances, and the relationship between identity and access to power. This book will provide an opportunity to look at efforts at institutional change with respect to diversity in several countries where issues of diversity are moving beyond simply access for diverse populations to efforts at institutional transformation. Its purpose is to provide a comparative perspective with the hope that we will be able to see patterns across these contexts from which we might learn. Amongst other subjects it will address:

• Thehistoric and contemporary context for diversity
• Established and emerging salient identities
• How diversity is framed at a national and institutional level
• The prevailing strategies and policies for engaging diversity, again at the national and institutional level
• The role of special purpose institutions

This critical book is essential for higher education scholars and practitioners with backgrounds in higher education.

PART I Setting the context

1 Introduction The national, international, and institutional context for diversity

DOI: 10.4324/9781315797885-1

DARYL G. SMITH

In addition to many pressures that are pushing higher education to change around the world, diversity and inclusion is fast becoming a major opportunity and challenge to institutions, countries, and regions. As will be clear, the increasing centrality of diversity is fueled in part by changing demographics, immigration, social movements, economic disparities, calls for remedies to historic grievances, and, the pressures on higher education to play an increased role in the health and wellbeing of society.

The use of the term diversity, however, must be clarified because in the general study of higher education organizations, diversity often means variety in institutional types (Birnbaum 1983; Morphew 2009; Palfreyman 2001). Moreover, historically in higher education, diversity, and inclusion began as a concern about access to higher education for historically underrepresented students and the study of broadening access has been foundational to the international comparative work related to diversity to date (e.g. Breen & Jonsson 2005; Shavit, Arum, Samoran, & Menachem, 2007; Tapper & Palfreyman 2005). The concept of diversity and inclusion, here, refers to historic and contemporary issues of how institutions reflect people from diverse backgrounds and how institutional transformation is occurring with respect to diversity and inclusion for all identities that have emerged as salient in given political, social, and historical contexts. In other words, what identities are salient today and how is diversity impacting mission, strategic and programmatic efforts, institutional climate, research, knowledge transformation, teaching in increasingly diverse societies, hiring, leadership, and accountability?

How identities become salient and associated with diversity will differ in local contexts. Nonetheless, there is more overlap than one might expect. Gender is, of course, salient in many national contexts in higher education framed not only as a necessity for access but also for institutional transformation because of the ways in which higher education has been “gendered” (Sagaria 2005). Race and ethnicity have historically been significant identities related to diversity in the United States and South Africa. Because of growing concerns about equity, they are also emerging in the United Kingdom and Brazil. Similarly, the place of indigenous communities in higher education emerges in many of the countries to be studied. Increasingly, other identity groups are emerging as part of the discussion about institutions and how they function. These include topics related to sexual orientation, disability, class, and religion.

There is a growing understanding of the importance of higher education to healthy societies; yet, the complexities that surface about identity and the strategies needed to create pluralistic communities that work are not discussed frequently enough or with sufficient depth at the policy level or within academe. These issues are not about changing individuals; they are about changing the institutions and structures that make identities salient and, as such, they are deeply connected to the ways in which individuals interact and institutions function (Gutman 2003; Putnam 2007; Smith 2009).

By extension they are intrinsically connected to the future of a democratic society. Cloete, Cross, Muller, and Pillay (1999) suggest that: “A curriculum for common citizenship and sites for democratic practices could be a central role for higher education in South Africa’s fledgling democratic practice” (p. 46). In the 1990s a Ford Foundation sponsored program called for a conversation about Diversity, Democracy, and Higher Education among teams from India, South Africa, and the United States. This three-year project underscored the role of diversity for the vitality and viability of democracy and the role of higher education (Beckham 2000, 2002; Cloete et al. 1999; Cloete, Muller, Makgoba & Eking 1997; Cross et al. 1999). What emerged from this project were common issues related to institutional transformation – curriculum, change, faculty capacity, and knowledge development. As Smith (2009: 44) has noted:

Higher education, then, rather than being seen as the elite terminus of the educational pipeline, can be seen as one of the beginnings. In addition to its crucial role in building the capacities of individuals from all sectors of society, higher education plays a strong role in defining knowledge, identifying and framing problems that need to be solved, allocating resources, developing and training teachers and faculty, and cultivating leaders for all sectors.

With such a view, the challenge for higher education is about creating diverse communities that work and building the capacity to engage the kind of changes that address historic and present-day inequities for the purpose of excellence in very pluralistic societies. This book provides an opportunity to look at the status of institutional transformation with respect to diversity and inclusion in several countries where issues of diversity have developed as an important part of changes in society. In each, one begins to see diversity and inclusion work moving, albeit slowly, beyond simply attempts to add new populations toward efforts at institutional transformation.

This work on diversity and institutional transformation in higher education is strengthened by emerging literature that reflects increasing attention to the embedded nature of identities in institutional cultures, practices, and standards. Often this scholarship focuses on a single identity such as gender or race, and how institutions, not just individuals, have deeply embedded identities associated with race, gender, class, ability, religion, etc. (Calás & Smircich 1992; Chin & Sanches-Hucles 2007; Morley 2005; Rees 2007; Sagaria 2005). As Calás and Smircich (1992: 229) have observed with respect to gender:

The organizational literature that supposedly considers gender has been labeled women-in-management literature. The … label reveals that gender is important to organization theorizing only because the biological entities – women – suddenly arrived in management changing the nature of the situation. Prior to the entrance of women, there was (apparently) no ‘gender’ in management.

This observation can easily be applied to the often-assumed neutrality of institutions with respect to race, class, sexual orientation, etc. Nonetheless, in the broad organizational literature in higher education, the study of organizations remains largely untouched by the study of diversity raising questions about the generalizability of many of the findings and theories.

Similarly, epistemological questions about knowledge creation, and how it is influenced by diversity, continue to evolve. In many academic disciplines, though not all, consideration of diversity has had a transformative effect on the questions of the discipline, the content of the discipline and the diversity of scholars in the discipline. In the hard sciences, while the content may be less directly connected to diversity, there certainly has been growing concern of who enters the field and the success of the fields in bringing diverse people and perspectives. As Rees (2007: 17) notes, “the culture and organization of science, while purporting to be gender neutral, are imbued with gender.”

While there are books that speak to institutional transformation with respect to diversity in single countries (e.g., Cloete et al. 1997, 1999, 2002; Cross, Mikwanazi-Twala, & Klein 1998; Ensor 2004; Essof 2006; Mabokela 1998; Schwartzman 2003; Silva & Araujo-Oliveira 2009) and others that address institutional change with respect to single identities such as gender (e.g., Bagilhole & White 2001; Brooks & MacKinnon 2001; Fogelberg, Hearn, Husu, & Mankkinen 2000; Husu & Morley 2001; Mabokela 1998; Sagaria 2005), little research provides a comparative perspective focusing on institutional transformation with regard to the emerging lists of salient identities and the ways in which they impact institutional change. This book will bring these two areas together and provide an opportunity to see what might be learned from such a cross-cutting analysis about the following:

1. What is the historic and contemporary context for diversity?
2. What identities have been and are emerging as salient?
3. How is diversity framed at a national and institutional level? Where is institutional change occurring, for which identities, and for what reasons?
4. What are the prevailing strategies and policies for engaging diversity, again at the national and institutional level? Is it seen as an institutional imperative and in what ways?
5. To what degree are special-purpose institutions developed for higher education and what role do they play?
6. What indicators, if any are being used, to monitor progress? Is progress being monitored systemically and how?

While most countries and regions are dealing with issues related to diversity, three primary criteria were used to select the countries to be studied. Each country has a well-developed higher education system that functions in the context of a democratic system; each engages race and gender as explicit parts of the diversity discussion; and each has some scholarship developing on this topic in the national context. At the same time, together these countries represent quite varied regions of the world.

Part I of the book sets the context for institutional transformations. Chapter 2 explores more fully how the concept of identity can be understood in addressing diversity at the group and individual level. It summarizes key developments in the evolution of the concept of identity and the implications of these complex notions of identity for diversity efforts. The chapter also emphasizes that while identity is often associated with individuals and groups, it must also be understood as being associated with institutions and their cultures. The emerging literature on identity and the topics related to changing demographics internationally provide a critical context for the country-specific chapters that follow.

In Part II, we introduce the country-specific chapters. Some of the chapters approach the topic from a national policy perspective as in the chapters describing diversity in the UK and Brazil. Others approach the topic from an institutional perspective. The chapters on South Africa and the United States provide this orientation. Finally, the chapter on indigenous institutions takes a multi-national perspective in both the United States and New Zealand.

Chapter 3, by Jonathan D. Jansen, presents the current state of institutional transformation in South Africa through the perspective of the University of Free State where Professor Jansen serves as the first Black rector of an historically Afrikaans institution. Here the words institutional transformation are deeply embedded in the research and policy context even as issues of access for Black South Africans remains a priority and an important matter of unfinished business. The chapter also underscores the challenges of dealing with historic grievances and reassuring those fearful of change ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Series editors’ introduction
• Acknowledgements
• PART I Setting the context
• PART II The status of institutional transformation and diversity in selected countries
• PART III A comparative look
• Index