Assessing How Diversity Affects Students' Interest in Social Change

Abstract

As the country's racial/ethnic minority representation increases, colleges and universities have increasingly sought to diversify their enrollments in order to better prepare all students to live and work in a diverse democracy. However, diversification may negatively affect campus climate and undergraduate peer relations leading to both increased racial tensions and to lower levels of satisfaction and retention for both minority and majority students. This study examined the effects of students' entry characteristics, pre-college environments, and pre-college activities on 3 democratic outcomes that serve as potential indicators of new undergraduate students' readiness to positively engage with diversity: social change self-efficacy, social action engagement, and social leadership skills. Data were collected from 1 of 10 public universities that participated in a 2001 national study that investigated how diversity helps shape students' attitudes and beliefs. The results indicate that students who are more engaged with diversity prior to college are more likely to perceive themselves as ready to proactively engage with diversity as college students.

Promoting Participation in a Diverse Democracy

“…Two studies were excluded from the meta-analysis because they analyzed subsamples of the Preparing College Students for a Diverse Democracy data set (Hurtado & Ponjuan, 2005;Kotori, 2009); other research had already examined the relationship between the same diversity experiences and civic outcomes using the full sample of this data set (Engberg, 2007;Hurtado, 2005). Two additional studies were excluded because the diversity experiences occurred in high school (Engberg, Meader, & Hurtado, 2003;Malaney & Berger, 2005). Another study was excluded because it reported only unstandardized coefficients and there was not sufficient information in the article to calculate standardized effects (Yamamura & Denson, 2005).…”

Learning as Liberation: How Liberal Arts Education Transforms First-Generation/Low Socio-Economic College Students

“…However, the related notion of increased respect and tolerance for diversity has been found to be a key outcome related to college attendance (Astin, 1993;Bowen,1977;Hu & Kuh, 2003;Pascarella et al, 2004;Winter, McClelland, & Stewart, 1981). Furthermore, students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds have been found to come to campus particularly eager to engage in democratic related initiatives (Malaney & Berger, 2004). While increased tolerance and interest in democracy are not necessarily identical to validation of dissent, they often accompanied the types of dissent found in this present study.…”