Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in US Higher Education: Critical Discourse Analysis of Minority Serving Institutions’ Mission, Vision, and Values Statements

• In Event: Transnational Perspectives on Higher Education: Examining Institutional Mission, Equity, Strategy, and Societal Relevance

Proposal

In recent years, the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) discourse has been prevalent across the US higher education institutions. This discourse is crucial due to the growing number of minoritized students, including those from African American, Latinx, Asian American, Native American, and Pacific Islander backgrounds. Therefore, the question of how to develop an official narrative that better supports these marginalized groups in higher education comes to the fore. While the institutional mission/diversity statements can provide insights on the way they embrace EDI, this area remains underresearched (Wilson et al., 2012). Moreover, while Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) play an important role in supporting marginalized students, their significance and potential have been overlooked (Jackson & Rudin, 2019), which also explains the lack of focus on their official documents in the existing literature.
Given this research gap, this study aims to delve into the rhetoric of the MSIs in the US and examine the way these institutions understand, embrace, and implement EDI in their official documents (i.e., the mission, vision, and values statements). It seeks to address the following questions: 1) How do MSIs embrace EDI in their rhetoric as evidenced by their mission, vision, and values statements? 2) In what way does this rhetoric align with EDI values? (i.e., does it foster EDI values or reproduce oppressive social structures?)
Guided by the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the study adopts Fairclough’s (1992, 2001) three-level analysis to gain insights into the selected MSIs’ understanding of the concepts of “equity”, “diversity”, and “inclusion” in their official documents. These stages include: description, interpretation, and explanation. The descriptive phase involves the analysis of the documents with respect to their lexical choices and grammatical features. The interpretation stage involves deciphering the text by placing the discourse participants at the center of the analysis. Here, we identify MSIs perspectives to “equity”, “diversity”, and “inclusion” through linking their perspectives to the population they are serving. The explanation phase revolves around the description of the discourse as a social process. Here, we place the discourse in the larger context to have insights on whether the selected MSIs’ understanding of “equity”, “diversity”, and “inclusion” reproduce or challenge oppressive power structures.
The study rests on the data drawn from the mission, vision, and values statements that were collected from the institutions’ official websites. The primary data source included a list of universities and colleges classified as Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) by the US Department of Education. The original list of institutions included a total of 864 institutions which categorized all the MSIs into four types including public 2-year, public 4-year or above, private 2-year, and private 4-year or above. We filtered the list down to a total number of 420 public and private universities and colleges that either serve different minority ethnic groups (e.g., AANAPISI, HSI, NASNTI, HBCU) or a specific ethnic minority group. Additional inclusion criteria involved all US public and private higher education institutions, which offer 4 years or above degree programs within the Carnegie classification of Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctoral programs. Since these institutions aim to serve a diverse student population, the research team assumed that their policies should be tailored to address the minoritized students’ needs. Therefore, exploring their rhetoric through the critical discourse analysis of their official documents would provide insights into how they understand, embrace or otherwise challenge EDI.
We classified the institutions into three categories. First, MSIs that contain EDI rhetoric and here we identified all keywords associated with the three terms of “equity”, “diversity”, and “inclusion”, which were categorized as “EDI”. Second, MSIs that do not explicitly mention these terms, but instead use relevant definitions/language of EDI (e.g., social justice, access, multiculturalism, global citizenship, etc.), which were categorized as “Relevant”. Lastly, MSIs that do not contain the EDI rhetoric and instead focus on advancing other educational goals, which were categorized as “No EDI”.
Our findings suggest that while MSIs classified as Master’s and Doctoral institutions (according to the Carnegie classification) are more likely to embrace EDI, the amount of “No EDI” surpasses “EDI” in MSIs with Bachelor’s classification. Moreover, the findings illustrate that the largest category in the total MSIs’ rhetoric on EDI, comprising 55% of MSIs, falls under “EDI.” This suggests that a significant number of MSIs focus on broad EDI themes, using keywords associated with EDI. An additional 17% of MSIs focus on relevant EDI terms such as “social justice” and “multiculturalism,” indicating a widespread commitment to these principles in their rhetoric across both groups. However, 28% of MSIs have no explicit EDI focus, instead prioritizing broader educational goals such as lifelong learning or quality education. This suggests that while EDI is a significant theme in the institutional official documents, some MSIs clearly prioritize other educational values and do not highlight EDI values as expected. In our paper, we also focus on the specific language used by institutions when referring to EDI.
This study is significant in a number of ways. First, it provides insights into whether and how higher education institutions articulate and prioritize their commitment to EDI to foster an inclusive environment that integrates and values various backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. By analyzing the language of their official documents, we primarily aim to assess whether universities are merely paying lip service to diversity or are genuinely embedding EDI principles into their goals. Second, it contributes to the existing body of literature that uncovers how effectively universities are addressing current societal and global challenges and aligning their mission statements with broader EDI goals. Lastly, it helps highlight the gaps and areas for improvement that may potentially inform policymakers, educators, and administrators on how to better communicate and implement diversity initiatives to improve the educational experience of their diverse student populations. The findings of our study can be also applicable to various higher education institutions across the globe.

Authors

• Fadhila Hadjeris, UCLA

• Kathy Li, UCLA

• Nancy Xu, UCLA

• Veronika Rozhenkova, University of California, Irvine