The Merit/Access Binary: How University Recruitment Practices May Serve to Maintain Inequality

• In Event: 67.069 - Sheraton Roundtable 14 - Osgoode Ballroom
  In Roundtable Session: 67.069-6 - Diversifying the Academy: Perspectives of Organizational Transformation

Abstract

University recruitment practices seem noble from a distance: admission counselors visit high schools and design campus visit programs meant to both attract top students and to increase the diversity and accessibility of the school. However, these two institutional goals—merit and access—are often framed to be in direct opposition to each other. Campus leaders assume that students are either talented/ meritorious or diverse/ needy, and their recruitment and enrollment tactics reflect this bias. In this paper, I examine the construction and uses of the merit/access binary, the term I have developed to conceptualize this constructed tension. Ultimately, I argue that the reliance on this binary only acts to reinforce existing hierarchies and inequities.

Author

• Malerie Beth Barnes, University of Colorado - Boulder