Threading the Diversity Needle: The Impact of Minority Group Presence on Perceptions of Organizational Status

• In Event: 331 - Regular Session. Sociology of Higher Education I - Aspiring Students, Aspiring Organizations: The Social Construction of Identity and Status in Higher Education

Abstract

Amidst competition for status, colleges in the U.S. position themselves as desirable places to spend four years, highlighting their unique academic, social, and extracurricular benefits to potential applicants. Part of this positioning includes an important, if amorphous, commitment to diversity. Each applicant, in selecting where to apply, has an idiosyncratic understanding of what diversity actually means; preferences differ accordingly. This leaves diversity-promoting schools to figure out roughly what an “appropriate” mix of students is, while applicants then choose from an array of institutions. In aggregate, students’ selections have consequences for the status of the school, as applicants’ decisions signal desirability and prestige to future applicants. Against this backdrop, two seemingly incongruous phenomena exist: increases in the proportion of a school’s Asian American students—a high scoring and achieving group—improve a school’s ranking, but appear to cause harm in the eyes of applicants and peer schools’ administrators. These are two key constituencies from whom schools seek status rewards in the form of applications and peer assessments, respectively. I explore the loss of status associated with increased Asian American presence on campus and discuss the implications of these dynamics.

Author

• Noah Askin, INSEAD