Counting what counts

A good argument from HEDS representative Mark Salisbury on the Department of Education diversity reporting requirements:

"As a result of the new federal rules, we currently have race/ethnicity data for two groups of students (freshmen/sophomores who entered after the new rules were implemented and juniors/seniors who entered under the old rules) that reflect two different conceptions of race/ethnicity. Although we developed a crosswalk in an attempt to create uniformity in the data, for each additional wrinkle that we resolve another one appears. Thus, we admittedly have more confidence in the "diversity" numbers that we reported this year (2011) than those we reported last year (2010). Moreover, the change in questions has set up a domino effect across many colleges where, depending upon how an institution tried to deal with these changes, an individual institution could come up with vastly different "diversity" numbers, each supported by a reasonable analytic argument. . . .

But we do ourselves substantial harm if we get hung up on a quest for precision. In reality, the problem originates not in the numbers themselves but in the relative value we place on those numbers and the decisions we make or the money we spend as a result. Interestingly, if you ask our current students, they will tell you that they conceive of diversity in very different ways than those of us who came of age several decades ago (or more). Increasingly, for example, socio-economic class is becoming a powerful marker of difference, and a growing body of research has made it even more apparent that the intersection of socio-economic class and race/ethnicity produces vastly different effects across diverse student types."

See full piece at http://www.augustana.edu/x37497.xml.

Salisbury, M. (2011, October 17). Delicious ambiguity. Faculty Newsletter, 9(9). Retrieved November 22, 2011, from Augustana College, Academic Affairs Office website.