20.35% of the student population is Hispanic or Latino, a 483% increase from 1976. The number of female college attendance has nearly doubled since 1976, increasing by 82.9%
With outsized increases in female and Hispanic enrollment, the number of white men going to college must have fallen sharply.
The last time I brought up the divergence in enrollment trends in Michigan, a reply pointed out the drop in population in Michigan. The gains by U of M and State, accounted for the drops everywhere else, when population shrink was taken into account.
Yet the second tier universities are building new buildings. Whatsa Matta U has replaced several buildings in recent years, including the chemistry building, student union building, and, now, one of the Goldsworth Valley dorm complexes is being torn down, to be replaced by new construction. I suspect the second tier universities think that, if they have nicer facilities, they can better attract new students. But, they are still second string. So who would go there, if they could get into one of the two top universities?
Yep. Well, maybe. White non-Hispanic male enrollment feel from about 4.8M to 4M (at least through 2022). But it’s always worth remembering that most Hispanic people in this country self-identify as white. So whether there’s an absolute decline in white males depends on how you count that category.
But women today make up about 58% of college enrollees, and an even larger percentage of college graduates.
I suspect that they’re aiming for the students who can’t get into one of the top two universities. They probably always have been. Declining enrollment increases competition among colleges for the students that remain - and that competition is probably harder for the less-selective colleges. They have to re-invest in their facilities (and every other aspect of their program) if they want to get students in the door.
It’s not just local population though. Recently (last year, maybe the year before) I read an article about how more northerners have been choosing to attend southern colleges (FL, TX, etc). The reasons given in the piece I mentioned were “better sports”, “better weather”, “less politics”, “more partying”). I wish I could find it again, I seem to recall that we discussed it here.
Oh, sure. But generally speaking, the main appeal of the non-selective part of state university systems is for in-state residents. They’re usually cheaper for domestic residents, and often are designed to meet the needs of those who live in and plan to stay in the state. So states that are seeing big increases in overall population (like Florida) might see stronger demand for the lower tier state universities compared to a state that has relatively flat population (like Michigan). They’ll just have comparatively more in-state students overall which will trim enrollment declines in the mid- and lower-tier state schools.
Your post highlights a very narrow view of what DEI programs aim to do. Why is it that people think all DEI programs are only intended to help disadvantaged, poorly educated minorities? It feeds into the stereotype that minorities can only complete with whites if they’re given an unfair leg up…that wealthy whites are always more qualified for college admissions and jobs.
Flipping the script. Maybe colleges and employers with DEI programs also think that the most qualified candidate may very well be a POC, someone who’s LGTBQ, someone who’s neurodivergent, etc. In order to find, support, and retain this most qualified person, they have a DEI program.
With all the examples of higher education and public companies ditching their DEI efforts, there are many more private companies that don’t give a rip about anti-woke lunacy.
It just makes me experienced. In my experience DEI statements are just busywork. They carry no weight in the hiring decision.
As they say, the path to that really bad place is paved with good intentions. I think DEI programs probably did a lot of good from 1960 to about 2000. But none of these programs were designed to work forever. In fact, it appears that over the past 10 years, DEI programs have may have made workplaces and campuses more hostile to the groups they were designed to help.
The white guy with the high school education who is having problems finding a decent job sees LGBTQ everywhere in movies and TV, Asians dominating college campuses, Indians the CEOs in silicon valley. It doesn’t seem unreasonable for him to ask what about DEI for people who look like him who haven’t found the American Dream.
I know the acceptable position on the left is to emphasize race, gender, and sexual preference, but I firmly believe that the most significant cultural divider in this country is economics.
If he’s assuming all those other people only found the American Dream because of DEI, that seems unreasonable.
That’s where most of the conservative beef comes from. “That person is brown and doing better than me…must be DEI!” What a bunch of crybaby snowflakes. Not surprising given their hero.
But that’s the problem. DEI programs give rise to that impression thereby increasing the racial tensions in the workplace.
I think most think it acceptable for a DEI program to achieve diversification by making a greater effort to recruit a more diverse pool of applicants and guaranteeing that all applicants be treated equally.
But I think many DEI programs went a bridge too far by giving the strong implication that race/gender is a significant factor in hiring/accepting a candidate. That is the definition of a racist or sexist hiring policy. That fosters resentment.
For example, McDonalds is not eliminating their DEI program. They are shifting their focus from trying to achieve a representative workforce to one that guarantees equal opportunity.
At the same time, following our comprehensive review, we also identified a few practices that we plan to modify. Specifically:
We are retiring setting aspirational representation goals and instead keeping our focus on continuing to embed inclusion practices that grow our business into our everyday process and operations.
We are pausing external surveys to focus on the work we are doing internally to grow the business.
We are retiring Supply Chain’s Mutual Commitment to DEI pledge in favor of a more integrated discussion with suppliers about inclusion as it relates to business performance.
We are evolving how we refer to our diversity team, which will now be the Global Inclusion Team. This name change is more fitting for McDonald’s in light of our inclusion value and better aligns with this team’s work. Our Commitment to Inclusion at McDonald’s
Before there were “racial tensions in the workplace”, because almost everyone in the cush office jobs were white, there were racial tensions in the streets. I remember watching TV one evening, when an announcer broke in to call a list of Michigan National Guard units to report to their armories, because a riot had broken out in Detroit. First snootfull of teargas I ever got, was in high school, because the police were trying to suppress a racial riot.
The man in the white shirt and tie, no coat, is George Romney, at that time, Governor of Michigan, leading a civil rights march. Some years later, his son recalled how his father campaigned for civil rights, and was flamed by members of his own party, because the US is going retrograde.
Instructing Animosity: How DEI Pedagogy Produces the Hostile Attribution Bias
A 2023 study by the Pew Research Center found that 52% of American workers have DEI meetings or training events at work, and according to Iris Bohnet, a professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, $8 billion is spent annually on such programs…
This study focused on diversity training interventions that emphasize awareness of and opposition to “systemic oppression,” a trend fueled by the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement and popularized by texts such as Ibram X. Kendi’s, How to Be an Antiracist…
Rhetoric from these materials was excerpted and administered in psychological surveys measuring explicit bias, social distancing, demonization, and authoritarian tendencies…Across all groupings, instead of reducing bias, they engendered a hostile attribution bias, amplifying perceptions of prejudicial hostility where none was present, and punitive responses to the imaginary prejudice.
I hear ya, we should be more sensitive to the racists’ feelings. Everybody knows they’re very reasonable people who will straighten out once we get rid of DEI.
Civil Rights and DEI are not the same thing. Civil Rights is about equal opportunity and equal protection under the law. DEI in its stronger form is about requiring that minority groups in businesses and colleges be represented in the same proportion as in the general population.
We recognize the absurdity of proportionality when it comes to sports and the entertainment industries. Why not elsewhere? We accept the premise that deviating from a merit based system would significantly reduce the quality of product coming out of the NBA or our olympic team. We end up with sprinters who are mostly Black and swimmers who are mostly White. Why aren’t you guys all riled up about that?
Why is skepticism about DEI racist? MLK advocated for a color-blind America, where one would be judged by the quality of one’s character rather than the color of one’s skin. That’s not the philosophy of identity politics and DEI.
I try to be more a pragmatist than an ideologue. DEI type programs were impactful shortly after Jim Crow, when people had to get used to integration. That was over 50 years ago. We’ve had a black president since and just had a black-Asian woman almost win the election. It is possible that the policies first developed 50 years ago just might be out of date.
Perhaps the time has come to not always think of Blacks and other POC as always needing our help but rather to think of them as equals who demand our respect.
The point is this…people who automatically assume that successful minorities are only successful because of DEI have at best, racist tendencies. At worst, they’re unapologetic racists. DEI isn’t giving them an impression, they believe what they believe.
DEI doesn’t make a person successful. A person’s ability and talent make him/her successful.
I can’t imagine a more degrading feeling than to know that my promotion or job placement was due to a companies need to fill out a DEI quota.
DEI isn’t much different than nepotism. We had nepotism at the company I worked at. There was only one person that went from the production line to national sales head. Being the owner’s son helps. This guy never had anyone’s respect.
That’s an odd argument. My position all along is that most minorities don’t need DEI to be successful, so why bother with DEI? What’s the point if it doesn’t provide some significant advantage? And if it does provide an advantage, don’t these folks you are painting as racist kind of have a point that the playing field is tilted?
Furthermore a consequence of DEI in its stronger forms is to stigmatize these successful minorities and anger their neighbors. We recently had the example of a lot of Asian students wondering why they had to have better test scores than other minorities to be competitive in college applications. Are Asian Americans being unreasonable? Their argument was sufficiently compelling that they won the court case.
But I keep coming back to the NBA, perhaps the most racially segregated big business organization in the nation outside of Nascar. Why does the left feel equal opportunity is sufficient for the NBA while most every other organization needs to strive for ethnic proportionality through DEI?
I have never witnessed that. I worked in a construction-based industry. About as redneck as you can imagine. Never witnessed racism in promotion or policies. Whenever there was a special project that needed attention there was one criteria. The individuals had to be the best in their skill set. The teams were always a mixture of blacks, Hispanics and whites. And for a while one Asian. He was always sought after.
It’s not that racism didn’t occasionally occur. Here’s a true story.
I had a supervisor come to my office and reported an altercation had occurred between a white and black employee. The supervisor found the white guy by an overhead door bent over and gasping for air. He asked him what was wrong. The white guy stood up and raised his shirt. There was a large red spot on his chest. He softly said in short breaths " never call Sly a …) (racial slur). The supervisor looked over at Sly and Sly just shrugged his shoulders. Sly was a large man. He had arms the size of most men’s legs.
So I asked the supervisor where they were now. He said they went back to work. The two of them worked together. Sly fed the saw and the white guy caught the material. I told the supervisor I would go back and talk to them in a moment. When I went back there, they were working away. I stood there, looked at Sly and said “You good?” He replied “yeah” I looked at the white guy and said “you ok?”. He said “yeah”. Later in the day I took Sly off to the side. I told him the next time he’s called a name to please come tell me and not hit the guy. I had been wanting to fire this white guy for some time but I couldn’t do it now with Sly hitting him. If HR found out about this I would have had to fire them both.
