Usher: The EDI Hiring Bulge

2023/02/10 Leave a comment

Good analysis and myth destroying by Alex Usher:

A couple of days ago on the website Minding the Campus, a product of the National Association of Scholars (one of those Alan Bloom-loving revere-the-classics, free-exchange-of-ideas, but no-not-those-kinds-of-idea outfits) a research associate named John Sailer posted a list of academic jobs that were being advertised at The Ohio State University (you have to include the “the”. It’s a rule.) as an example of “political activism.”  Here’s the meat of the post:

[OSU’s] RAISE initiative (extends to fields that have little connection with DEI. The university is currently seeking three STEM professors—in chemistry, mathematics, and physics—who will “study issues relevant to educational equity.” One cluster hire on the social determinants of health includes roles in medicine, nursing, and engineering. Successful candidates for these jobs must show “a demonstrated commitment to diversity and inclusive excellence” and submit “a brief DEI narrative describing commitment to improving inclusive excellence” and demonstrating how their research focuses on “improving health equity.”

Many of Ohio State’s humanities jobs, meanwhile, now focus exclusively on race. The history department currently lists just two positions: “Contemporary African American History” and “African American History to 1820.” The Department of Comparative Studies lists three: “Indigenous Knowledge,” “Race, Science, and Technology,” and “Race and Health Equity.” The Department of French and Italian is hiring only one professor, an “Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies with a specialization in Black France.”

The university’s indigenous studies cluster hire—which is independent of the RAISE initiative—includes a role in “Indigenous Feminisms,” calling for a professor who will study “gendered and sexualized disparities alongside the dispossessions of settler colonialism” and “the potentials of women- and two-spirit or queer-led innovations in preserving embattled minority and colonized food/health/body/eco cultures.” Another role in the cluster is more novel, “Indigenous Siberian Studies,” a scholar in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures who will “explore questions about indigenous people’s knowledges and cultural practices” related to “race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, im/mobility, health, food, and environment, in imperial/post-imperial, communist/post-communist, or comparative contexts.”

The argument here is an anti-EDI one, but it is different from the ones you usually see.  It is not “EDI is unjust reverse discrimination” as much as it is “EDI is changing and perhaps perverting the nature of academic disciplines.”   The argument was pitched to specialists, claiming that their specialty is changing and perhaps leaving them behind. 

So, has OSU been “captured” by people who want to make it Subaltern U?  Well, in the first place, caution is warranted because we don’t have a good picture of how many jobs are up for grabs at OSU.  The article refers to about 10 positions. My guess is that OSU – which is the fourth-largest institution by enrolment in the United States and over 2,000 permanent faculty members – hires over 100 academic staff a year.  Question number one about this set of examples therefore is: “how representative is this list?”  And if it represents just 10% of new staff, then why should anyone consider it a big deal?

In the second place: ask yourself whether all these positions are misguided in the way Sailer charges.  A French department that doesn’t cover francophone Africa would be very limited, given that’s where over half of all French-speaking people live.  Physics departments that aren’t looking for people who can lead outreach and support programs for Black students are increasingly rare these days.  Specializations in Indigenous Siberian Studies might sound a bit obscure, but there’s any number of Indigenous studies programs focusing on North America, so it’s not obvious to me why offering similar treatment to indigenous cultures in Russia is illegitimate from an academic POV, unless you start from the perspective that certain cultures aren’t worth studying (there is, admittedly, a question about whether a position in Indigenous Siberian Studies located in Columbus, Ohio will bring in the necessary students and research dollars to pay its way, but that’s the department Chair’s call). 

In any event, colour me unpersuaded that the examples Sailer draws on to represent a wave of “misguided priorities” at the institution.  The job descriptions are much less radical that the author seems to think, and there’s no sense here of whether the author is cherry-picking (for what it’s worth, the OSU program through which these scholars are being hired was designed to bring in 50 scholars between 2020 and 2030, which at an institution the size of OSU is peanuts).  It read like cherry-picking and not of a particularly sophisticated variety.  But what was interesting to me is the number of twitter accounts from people I would normally qualify as pretty sensible tut-tutting about “the state of academia” exposed by this piece.

And I kind of get it.  If one isn’t quite alive to the extent of selective argumentation going on here (at most universities, 10 appointments is a pretty big fraction of annual hiring), and one interprets this kind of change as being “the shape of things to come”, then one might conclude that a wide variety of academic fields are being threatened with radical change in the sense that the focus of inquiry is changing completely (e.g. from France to Africa in the case of the French Studies, from Moscow to Siberia in the case of Russian studies).  And loyalty to discipline is a consistent theme amongst academics. It’s not difficult to see why something that seemed to be an attempt to alter disciplinary foci might seem threatening.

But the evidence that this is a permanent shift is thin.  Academia goes through cycles.  Right now, the cycle is one where many institutions, across a wide range of disciplines, are either trying to reach out to undergraduates from under-represented groups, or incorporate non-Western perspectives, or both.  This is a long and ongoing process, mainly because demand for scholars who can do such outreach or conduct effective research in these areas presently outstrips current supply.  It is not about making universities totally devoted to Subaltern studies (though this is pretty clearly what the author of this piece wanted readers to think); it is about a one-time Big Push to make sure under-represented students and previously neglected areas of studies have a larger place in the academy – sufficiently large, in fact, that maintaining strength in these areas no longer requires special hiring initiatives but is “par for the course”. That’s necessarily going to create a “bulge” in hiring to bring numbers up to that level: significant in the short-term, but less so in the long-term.

Anyways, if you’re tempted to get angry or despondent about a hiring story like this, just remember: it’s very likely that the extent of the phenomenon is inflated, and even to the extent it is not, the duration of the phenomenon is probably limited too. 

Source: The EDI Hiring Bulge

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Usher: A First Look At 2021 Education Census Data

2022/12/06 Leave a comment

Good analysis of census data by HESA:

Figure 1 shows the attainment rates of the population aged 25-64, by visible minority status and Indigenous identity.    What it shows is that there are some quite fascinating differences in attainment rates across different segments of the population.   Individuals who self-declare as visible minorities are somewhat less likely than other Canadian to have a PSE credential below the bachelor’s level but substantially more likely to have a degree at the bachelor’s level or above.  Those reporting Indigenous identity, meanwhile, have college credentials at higher levels similar to those of non-visible minority/non-Indigenous Canadians, but university attainment rates substantially  lower than those of other Canadians.  White Canadians have higher college attainment rates than visible minorities, but substantially lower university attainment rates. 

Figure 1: Post-Secondary Education Attainment by Level, Visible Minority Status and Indigenous Identity, Canadians Aged 25-64, Census 2021

Stacked bars showing that visible minorities have the highest rate of bachelor degree or above attainment.

This is, by the way, quite different from the situation in basically any other developed country except perhaps Australia and New Zealand; in most other countries with large scale immigration, visible minority populations tend to have much lower levels of education that the mainstream population.

One of the interesting things about this census is that it permits analysis not just by level of education but also by field of study.  Figure 2 runs the same analysis as figure 1, only examining the distribution of undergraduate degrees.  Again, we see some interesting distributions by visible minority/Indigenous identity.  The proportions of Canadians of various backgrounds who are in the fields of health and business are relatively consistent, but there are huge differences in the areas of education, social sciences/humanities and STEM.  For those with Indigenous identities, 45% of all degrees are in education, humanities and social sciences, while only 14% of all degrees are in STEM; among visible minorities (who, recall, are more than 3 times as likely to have a degree as those with Indigenous identity), it is 25% in education, humanities and social sciences and 35% in STEM.

Figure 2: Distribution of Degrees by Broad Field, Visible Minority Status and Indigenous Identity, Canadians Aged 25-64, Census 2021

Stacked bar charts showing percentage of people with education, humanities, SETM, management, health, or Other degrees

We can run the same kind of analyses by immigration status.  In figures 3 and 4, we repeat the analysis in figures 1 and 2, only by immigration status.  Statistics Canada divides Canadians into “first generation” (basically, individuals born outside Canada), “second generation” (at least one parent born outside Canada) and “third generation or more” (both parents born in Canada).  That second category is – if you ask me – a heck of a hodge-podge, so focus on the difference between first and third generations. 

Figure 3: Post-Secondary Education Attainment by Level and Immigration Generation, Canadians Aged 25-64, Census 2021

Stacked bars showing that "Third generation" people have the lowest percentage of bachelor attainments.

Figure 4: Distribution of Degrees by Broad Field and by Immigration Generation, Canadians Aged 25-64 Census 2021

Stacked bars showing that "Third generation" people have more humanities and social science degrees and "first generation" people have more STEM degrees.

There’s an old (American) cliche about how the first generation of immigrant families works hard in menial jobs to make sure their kids get ahead, the second generation works hard to get into professional schools and attract great wealth while the third generation goes to art school.  By the looks of it, Canada’s points-based immigration system allows us to skip that first generation thus bringing immigrants into humanities and arts programs that much faster.

Source: A First Look At 2021 Education Census Data

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Inequality in higher education: the American Dream is over

2022/10/03 Leave a comment

Of interest:

Can College Level the Playing Field: Higher education in an unequal society’ by Sandy Baum and Michael McPherson is published by Princeton University Press. ISBN: 978-0691-171-807

No doubt, Sandy Baum and Michael McPherson, authors of Can College Level the Playing Field: Higher education in an unequal society, were pleased by United States President Joe Biden’s recent announcement that the US government was forgiving US$10,000 of student debt held by people earning less than US$125,000 and US$20,000 of debt held by those who received Pell Grants, which are made to the nation’s poorest students – and by the plan to increase Pell Grants from by over US$2,000 to US$8,670. 

Likewise, New Mexico’s recent decision to make the first two years of higher education free to its residents fits well within their recommendations. 

Their scepticism about online education, especially for less prepared students, has become a leitmotif in the news because the impact of online education during the many COVID-19-caused shutdowns of universities, colleges and schools becomes clear.

For readers outside the United States, however, the strength of this book is not so much in its common sense recommendations but, rather, in its devastating portrait of inequality – in education, achievement and incomes – in America today. 

The Gini coefficient, a figure used by political scientists to show inequality, is 0.390 in the United States. The closer a country is to 1.0, the more its economy is inequitable; accordingly South Africa’s number, 0.623, indicates it is 62% more inequitable than is the US. By contrast, Canada’s number is 0.300 while Norway’s is 0.264.

“The correlation between socioeconomic background and educational attainment has more serious implications in the United States than in many other nations because not earning a four-year college degree has more significant implications for lifetime earnings than it does elsewhere,” write Baum and McPherson. 

Baum is a non-resident senior fellow at the Center on Education Data at the Washington DC-based Urban Institute and emeritus professor of economics at Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, New York), and McPherson is a non-resident fellow at the Urban Institute, former economics professor and former president of Macalester College (St Paul, Minnesota).

Among the other studies Baum and McPherson use to show that the “American Dream”, which holds that the next generation will climb higher on the socio-economic ladder, has become a nightmare, is the aptly named “Gatsby Curve”. 

At its top is the United States (closely followed by Britain and Italy). This visual representation is deceiving, for the higher the country is on the Gatsby Curve the less intergenerational improvement there is. At the top of the league table, so to speak, are Finland, Norway and Denmark, countries not normally associated with dynamic social change.

The higher education premium

Readers of this publication are used to seeing figures showing the premium higher education provides. The median income for a high school graduate in the United States is US$37,000 a year, or US$18 dollars an hour, a dollar over the minimum wage in New York. For someone with a bachelor degree it is US$62,000 and for those with advanced degrees it is US$82,000. 

However, as Baum and McPherson show, the benefits of higher education accrue to a minority of Americans. This fact, incidentally, is one of the reasons the Republicans oppose Biden’s plan to forgive student debt. 

95% of whites and 89% of blacks complete high school. However, only 40% of white people and 26% of black people hold bachelor degrees. Accordingly, the pay received by 60% of white people and 75% of black people are in jobs where they earn around the minimum wage.  

In fact, in reality, the income of black people is even worse than it appears. For the “median earnings of black 35- to 44-year-old bachelor degree recipients are about $14,000 less than the median for whites”. Instead of earning US$62,000, therefore, blacks with bachelor degrees earn US$48,000 a year, or US$23 per hour.

More than half of white students whose parents hold bachelor degrees go on to graduate from a four-year college or university. The figure is even more striking for children of doctorate holders: 70% of them go on to earn a doctorate. Only 5% of those whose parents graduated from a two-year community college go on to earn a doctorate. 

A meritocratic class

While perhaps predictable, what these figures show is that within families education builds on education, creating a meritocratic class quite separate from the majority of Americans.

Like the “sorting hat” that assigns students to their house at Hogwarts (Harry Potter), a number of America’s high school graduates are sifted by family income and race. 53% of students with very high scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) are admitted to highly selective schools like Harvard or University of Chicago. 

These are the same students who, Baum and McPherson show, tend to come from families in which the parents hold degrees. 

They are also the students who come from families with the financial means to have sent them to private school – or to live in wealthy areas where public schools are well-funded – and to provide extras such as travel, a bookish home environment and SAT preparatory courses. Not surprisingly, only 31% of students with middling scores are admitted to highly selective schools. 

When looked at through the prism of race, Baum and McPherson show the figures are even more striking. Of the admissions to highly selective schools, 89% are Asian, 78% are white, 38% are Latinx and 25% are black. The order, it is worth noting, is the same as it is on charts they show indicating the income of each group.

Growing inequality

One of the most interesting parts of Can College Level the Playing Field is the graph Baum and McPherson use in their discussion of growing inequality, a topic which has been much discussed in the media in recent years.

Since 1969 the bottom 20% of American households (by earnings) saw the percent of their income, relative to the national income, drop from 6% to 4%. The next fifth dropped from 12% to 9%. The third fifth also dropped three percentage points to 15%. The fourth fifth remained at 24%. The highest fifth saw the percentage of their income rise from 41% to 48%; the top five percent, who are part of the highest fifth, saw their incomes rise from 16% to 20%.

At first glance, the drop in income for the poorest Americans from 6% to 4% does not seem that much. It is, however, a 33% decline. While large, when set against the fact that between 1969 and 2019 the US economy grew almost five-fold, from US$4.9 trillion to US$19.4 trillion, it might seem as though this lowest quintile is still doing fairly well economically. 

However, the cumulative inflation rate over the six decades beginning in 1969 is eight-fold: what cost US$100 in 1969 would have cost US$800 in 2019. Accordingly, the poorest Americans have absorbed approximately a 50% decrease in their buying power.

Lowering admission requirements

In the chapter titled, “What Can Colleges and Universities do?” Baum and McPherson make several suggestions. The first is for the elite schools to enroll more poor students. They urge elite schools to lower the SAT expectations from 1,600 to 1,250 for poor students. 

To those who would howl that the schools would be selling out to lower expectations, Baum and McPherson point out that elite schools routinely make such arrangements for star athletes – the ones who will fill these schools’ expensive stadia. Further, they note, such arrangements are routinely made for what’s known as “legacy applicants”, many whose parents just so happen to have made large donations to the alma mater their son or daughter is applying to.

Baum and McPherson urge other state universities to adopt a programme similar to the Texas Top Ten Percent rule. In the “Lonestar State”, the top 10% of high school graduates – even from poor areas where the high schools are lower on the league tables – are guaranteed admission to the state’s public universities, including the state’s flagship institution, the University of Texas at Austin. 

“Outcomes were no worse for the students they replaced, who attended less selective institutions but did not have lower enrollment rates, graduation rates, or earnings than they would have otherwise had,” they write.

For several decades, the United States Supreme Court has whittled away at the affirmative action efforts colleges and universities have used to address the racial imbalance on America’s campuses. In simplified terms, the court has said that quotas cannot be used to address historic or present discrimination – because doing so discriminates against the plaintiff. 

Baum and McPherson propose an interesting way around the court’s rulings. Instead of affirmative action based on race, colleges and universities can create affirmative action programmes based on economic class. 

These would “not [be] vulnerable to a legal challenge based on the Fourteenth Amendment” and, since black people and Latinx Americans make up a disproportionate share of poor people, programmes aimed at the economic class would benefit a large number of them.

Academic support

Their recommendation for mid-tier universities, which educate the vast majority of America’s higher education students, includes increasing state grants that will keep tuition as low as possible. 

Larger state grants will also allow these colleges and universities to provide academic support services that are needed by a disproportionate number of poorer students (because the schools they went to were themselves poorly funded).

Absent from Biden’s announcement about changes to Pell Grants was something Baum and McPherson consider important : however necessary for student success, remediation classes use up Pell Grant room and do not count towards graduation. 

In other words, if students need 64 classes to graduate, but have taken four remediation classes, they will have to take a total of 68 classes to graduate because the remediation classes do not count towards graduation. 

The effect of this is that many poor students have to remain an extra semester to graduate, with the attendant economic costs and no further Pell assistance.

Source: Inequality in higher education: the American Dream is over

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