A numerification of “diversity” at German public universities

• In Event: A comparative exploration of higher education issues - diversity, agency and partnerships

Proposal

The displacement crisis in Germany has focused scholarly attention on refugee pathways to higher education, though much less research has attended to supports for marginalized students enrolled at higher education institutions (HEIs). This study used Constructivist Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2014) and a postcolonial lens to analyze “equal opportunity” plans and programs at 32 public HEIs. Data sources included the “equal opportunity plan” unique to each HEI and interviews with “equal opportunity office” staff. Key findings included a bureaucratization and numerification of diversity in the German case, as well as an almost exclusive focus on diversity as gender.

Background
The German higher education system is both primarily public and decentralized, ceding the direction of higher education to the 16 federal states. Further, the system is binary, with both universities of applied sciences (fachhochschulen) and research universities represented. Historically a relatively “flat” system in terms of quality, HEIs are now being intentionally differentiated under the auspices of the German Excellence Initiative, designed to facilitate increased competition in terms of admissions, faculty recruitment, and public‐private collaboration. There is concern that the robust support of more “prestigious” institutions will result in access and equity issues becoming even more urgent (Hüther & Krücken, 2018).

Conceptual Framework
This research utilized Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) in conversation with a postcolonial lens (El-Tayeb, 2016; Kilomba, 2008; Said, 1979). Coloniality is pervasive in former colonizing contexts and includes a “coloniality of knowledge” (Quijano, 2000). Further, there is a clear connection between coloniality’s structures and institutionalized, nationally-specific racism (Friedrich, 2011). Gutiérrez-Rodríguez (2016) has addressed this point in her work on the German university, writing that racial stratification “is recreated through subtle institutional practices favoring the access of the White national affluent population” (p. 169).

Data Sources and Analysis
The German HEI institutional unit most directly supporting marginalized students is the “equal opportunity office.” These units are legally mandated and each publishes a plan that defines and operationalizes “diversity” for the respective HEI. The research encompassed by this study included interviews with unit staff as well as document analysis of unit plans.

To reflect the range of state-based policy frameworks, this project employed stratified random sampling, where the sample consisted of one university and one fachhochschule per state. I utilized the German Rector’s Conference database to correlate HEIs with states and town or city size as provided by the German Federal Statistical Office. Finally, using one list for universities and one for fachhochschulen, I assigned a random number to each HEI and selected cases by moving from those HEIs with a random number closest to one and moving towards zero in each category.

CGT dictated the procedure for this project, with the analysis of data guided by sensitizing concepts including power, hierarchy, and hybridity. Indeed, a postcolonial lens has been previously employed by cross-disciplinary researchers working with and through grounded theory (Inman et al., 2015; Migliarini, 2018; Wachter & Gulbas, 2018).

Findings
A wide range of approaches to equal opportunity plan construction and staffing was evidenced by basic indicators: plans ranged from two to 400+ pages, and the number of unit staff ranged from a single part-time role to over 20 part-time positions. More broadly, analysis found that while offices articulated potentially expansive visions for diversity and "equal opportunity," they focused largely on gender, with most plans reflecting an understanding of gender as binary and inculcating a numerification of “diversity” (gender). That is to say, the detailed reporting of numbers of women in student, staff, and faculty roles was consistent across all of the documents analyzed, and in most cases was the emphasis of the plan. At some HEIs university units were funded based on achieving gender-specific goals. However, as observed in the trans-national education literature, essentialist identity markers such as gender, race, and migrant status themselves represent constructs. Indeed, the simplistic and linear nature of quantification elides a critical perspective (Bowleg, 2008). As Klein (2016) has written, a “recognitional concept of equality emphasiz[es] little more than tolerance and celebrating students and staff diversity” (p. 152).

The amount of time required for equal opportunity officers to report annual or “real time” figures related to “diversity” (gender) was substantial and prohibitive. This echoes a concern expressed in the U.S. setting, that diversity officers may be compelled to submit documentation for compliance purposes rather than focusing on student programming (Smith, 2016). To this point, one interview participant described an unwieldy bureaucratic structure of regulation:

“The law says I have the right ... to get [all notes] from every meeting here at the
university, at really every official meeting... In the first years my goal was to get the big ones...I’m looking at heads of the faculty and get memos of their meeting... in the first years it was a little crazy and they don’t like it and now I don’t think they like it [LAUGHS]...
but it’s easier to collaborate with me than to block me...”

Further, there was constant reference to how national averages (regarding stakeholders identifying as women) compared to the figures of the institution in question. The in vivo code Frauenanteil (proportion of women) was used 403 times across the plans surveyed and was present in each document.

Significance
This study employed CGT in an examination of the increasingly differentiated German higher education system, specifically a subset of its equal opportunity offices. In a comparatively well-resourced (albeit tuition free) system, it is striking that supports for “diverse” students are extremely limited, largely focused on cis-gender white women, and are heavily focused on the reporting of numbers of women across student, staff, and faculty bodies. Change in this area is urgently needed, beginning with a reframing of institutional “equal opportunity” plans, federal and state funding for more expansive diversity programs, and an understanding that while baseline data is needed for policy iteration, quantitative data collection elides lived experience and also constitutes (in this case) a prohibitive administrative burden.

Author

• Lisa Marie Unangst, Ohio University