Merits of Diversity: Individual and Collective Diversity Logics in German, American, British, and Indian Higher Education

• In Event: 21020 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 8: DEI Policies in Education

Abstract

Today, publicly endorsing “diversity” is a mandate for any university seeking legitimacy in a global higher education market. Yet at the same, diversity initiatives have been subject to fierce backlash, with many critics alleging that diversity initiatives compromise excellence and erode the principles of meritorious selection. The current political climate means that universities are under unprecedented pressure to justify the merits of diversity. Whereas previous research has investigated whether diversity is to be understood as a matter of talent-acquisition or social justice, our study investigates how universities envision achieving diversity. In particular, we are attuned to whether universities endorse an individual or group-level approach to achieving greater diversity. Who is the target of diversity efforts? Are universities focused on offering tailored support to each individual, or do they focus their attention on the empowerment of entire groups? Both of these approaches provide societal benefits, but the former is more closely linked with meritocratic principles of equal opportunity, whereas the latter is more associated with equity-inspired approaches. We qualitatively and computationally investigate these tensions across four higher education systems – the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, and India – which represent four distinct cases in the global higher education ecology. In investigating the strategies embedded in diversity texts, we offer novel, comparative insight into how universities conceptualize diversity and meritocracy as global cultural values.

Authors

• Sonia Giebel, Social Science Center Berlin

• Yasemin Soysal, Berlin Social Science Center, WZB

• Stefan Munnes, Social Science Center Berlin

• Guelay Caglar, Free University of Berlin

• Kathrin Zippel, Freie Universität Berlin