The Benefits of Diversity in Education for Democratic Citizenship

Abstract

The social science statement in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) stressed that desegregation would benefit both African American and White children. Eventually, it was recognized that integration, rather than mere desegregation, was important for benefits to be realized. A parallel argument is made in the legal cases concerning affirmative action in higher education: educational benefits of diversity depend on curricular and co‐curricular experience with diverse peers, not merely on their co‐existence in the same institution (Gurin, P., 1999, Gurin, Dey, Hurtado, & Gurin, 2002). Positive benefits of diversity were demonstrated in a study comparing students in a curricular diversity program with students in a matched control group (n = 174), and in a longitudinal survey of University of Michigan students (n = 1670).

Meta-Analysis in Higher Education: An Illustrative Example Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling

“…0.28 = 0.73 (SE = 0.11). 4 This estimate is very sensible when we consider the magnitude of the effect size estimates for the Lopez et al (1998), Muthuswamy et al (2006) and Gurin et al (2004) studies in Table 2 (i.e., 0.87, 0.86 and 0.48, respectively). Note, finally, that the estimate of s is approximately 0.025.…”

“…2 corresponds to the summary effect size for the sample. Note that the 95% intervals for 15 studies in the sample contain or include the summary effect size (e.g., the intervals for the Muthuswamy et al 2006;Gurin et al 2004;and Chang 2002 studies). However, we see that the 95% intervals for a number of other studies lie below the summary effect size (e.g., Antonio 2001), and the intervals for a third group of studies lie above the summary effect size (e.g., Lopez et al 1998); the non-overlap in 95% intervals for the latter two groups of studies signals that the studies in the sample very likely vary substantially in their true effect sizes.…”

“…Likewise, among the adjusted effect sizes, the two largest are from studies of C ? CRI programs (Lopez et al 1998;Gurin et al 2004).…”

“…CRI (i.e., Lopez et al 1998;Gurin et al 2004) . Thus the results for these studies have been controlled for potential confounders such as pretest differences.…”

“…CRI studies with adjusted effect sizes, the expected effect size is 0.70 with an SE of 0.12 (Model 4). Taking a closer look at these three studies (i.e., Gurin 2004;Lopez et al 1998;Muthuswamy et al 2006), they were all conducted at either the University of Michigan or Michigan State University. These studies all examined diversity ''programs'' which have been implemented on a single campus with the specific purpose of improving the institutional diversity climate.…”