Fall is settling in and the project of running campuses during a pandemic is well underway. As we get used to the constant stress of monitoring the health of our community, many of us have started to think about the other urgent things – budgets, enrollments, and most of all equity. These other urgent things may look like separate items, but they are really all of a piece. Addressing equity is addressing enrollment, which is addressing budgets. In higher education, the questions of equity must focus on four big issues: access to education, degree progress and completion, diversity in the curriculum, and diversity in the university community. This requires attention to a million little things.
Access to Education
Obviously, access to education starts with the cost of attendance. We have all heard the nightmare reports about excessive student loan debt for an undergraduate degree. Well, most of those large numbers, $100,000+ in debt, have to do with private universities. Most people (75%) attend public universities, and they should never have $100,000 in student loan debt, when public university tuition and fees range from $9,000-$14,000 per year.
Except….
Well, if you include room and board the cost of undergraduate tuition at a public university becomes $22,000-$25,000 per year. Four years equals about $100,000. Oh dear. Now, I must acknowledge that there are grants for the neediest students, which may cover a lot of the tuition and fees part, but it still leaves them with $11,000-$12,000 per year for room and board. This is still a debt of around $45,000, which is not an insignificant monthly payment after graduation. For students who can live at home and commute, there may be significant savings. But for many of those students there is an expectation of a contribution to the household income, which they struggle to provide. Yes, cost is an issue, even at public universities. State appropriations keep the cost well below private colleges and universities, but the incomes of many who attend public universities make those subsidies insufficient. We must shore up the funding for public higher education if we want to achieve equity in access.
Degree Progress and Completion
The second question about access must focus on a student’s ability to succeed in college. Was their experience of education in K-12 adequate preparation for a university education? Well, when we look at the statistics for K-12 as they relate to income and other demographic variables, the story is not a good one. Insufficiently funded K-12 districts absolutely correlate to gaps in preparation for college. It is not that students in these districts cannot succeed, they do all the time, but they sure aren’t set up to do so.
As a university committed to supporting students from all backgrounds, it is imperative that we invest in support systems for students who have not had the full benefit of a strong K-12 education. It does not matter why they did not, just that we must help them succeed. To do so requires investment in support programs, review of the funding we make available to needy students, and a review of barriers to receiving those funds. The details in our data and the investment in student success deserve attention.
It should be noted that the cost of attendance and the K-12 educational experience are directly linked to our students’ abilities to successfully progress through their four year degree program. If a student needs to build foundational skills in their first semester, they are likely to be out of step with their four-year plan. This often translates into an extra year (or two) of attendance (more tuition). It can also mean that they are systematically excluded from the majors that are designed for students who performed well in high school or on the SAT. No, we have not yet set things up so that all students have the opportunity to succeed.
Diversity in the Curriculum
When we talk about welcoming students who are the first in their families to attend college, we are frequently talking about an increasingly diverse student body. This is a wonderful thing, as it reflects our national commitment to social mobility and, well, equity. However, our policies and practices are often mystifying to these same students. Let’s face it, education as a whole is really good at establishing rules that are less than straightforward. Many universities have focused on first year programs to address the demystification of it all. This is a good first step. But what we have not consistently addressed is the fact that this diverse student body is not well represented in our curriculum.
The national conversation about higher education has focused on a perceived liberal bias in the curriculum. While I am sure that there are liberal and conservative faculty on most campuses, and that their opinions may make it into the classroom at times, the notion that there is an overall liberal bias certainly is not reflected in our offerings. Indeed, our offerings reflect the traditions of each discipline, conserving the past. Most of this is to the good, as we connect our students to the history of ideas. But there are always gaps in those histories, and we are slow to imagine whose stories and contributions we might be missing. Our wonderfully diverse student body has noticed these gaps. There is work to do to broaden those stories and better reflect the breadth of the contributions to who we are today.
Diversity in the University Community
Then there is the complex issue of creating an environment that welcomes and supports faculty, staff, and students from all backgrounds. I was struck by a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, that reviewed the impact (or lack of impact) of diversity training. These efforts have mixed and/or weak results. One of the likely reasons for this is that we do not do the rest of the work necessary to support that training. We raise awareness through special months or talks or events, but we do not dig into the routine practices that are keeping our biases in place.
It is not enough to discuss inclusion. We must systematically investigate and address the habits and assumptions that are re-enforcing exclusion. It is time to ask those hard questions like: Why are some departments dominated by female or male faculty? Why do some majors draw students from diverse backgrounds while others do not? Why are we unsuccessful at recruiting faculty and staff that reflect the diversity of our students? We mean well, but there is more work to do.
This is the start of a to-do list about equity. Under each heading there are at least twenty substantive questions that require research, planning, and investment. Taken together, it is not quite a million little things, but it sure is a lot of important things. It can be overwhelming, and that feeling can keep us on the usual path out of sheer exhaustion. But we must not yield to that exhaustion because all of this needs our attention now. These million little things really matter, both morally and for the health of our universities.
