Richard Garnett (Notre Dame; Google Scholar), True Campus Diversity:
Higher education in America, it is often observed, confronts serious challenges, even crises. True, many of the world’s leading research institutions are in the United States. And yet: Tuition-costs are soaring; the footprints and portfolios of human-resources, student-services, and other administrators are expanding; tenure-track faculty positions (especially in the humanities) are disappearing; reliance on (often exploited) adjuncts, graduate students, and short-term instructors is increasing; and regulatory burdens are growing.
What is more, it seems clear that partisan homogeneity and ideological conformity are crowding out the dialogue, debate, and diversity that should be at the heart of academic life and student experience. We are all familiar by now with stories and illustrations of how meaningful education is being undermined by divisive identity politics, incivility and uncharity in disagreement, and the weaponization of concepts like “safety” and “harm.” It is unlikely that our colleges and universities are preparing young people well either for responsible participation in the politics of our constitutional democracy or for everyday life in our workplaces and neighborhoods (let alone our social-media platforms).
Arguments about diversity in higher education are, of course, both unavoidable and highly charged. Generally, these debates have to do with the use of race in the admissions practices of elite institutions or with the dramatically one-sided make-up of these institutions’ faculty, administration, and leadership. A crucial dimension of the diversity problem, however, is less noticed: In a nutshell, we should be concerned about not only intellectual diversity within institutions, but also meaningful diversity among institutions, that is, what John Garvey, the President Emeritus of the Catholic University of America, called “institutional pluralism.” …
Our colleges and universities should not all look the same; they should (within reasonable bounds) have varying curricula and programs; they should develop different specialties and sub-fields; they should cultivate distinctive missions and aspirations; they may take on a range of characters; they should come in multiple shapes and sizes. Institutional pluralism means, among other things, that our colleges and universities may be public and private, big and small, research-focused or liberal-artsy. We can, and should, have land-grant institutions, historically Black institutions, single-sex institutions, and military institutions. Some can focus on music and the arts; others on engineering and technology. Some may be animated by religious traditions and aims, others by environmentalism or multiculturalism. An institution’s distinctive mission will shape its curriculum, its policies, its hiring, and its student body. And, these differences will, taken together, strengthen expressive freedom’s necessary infrastructure. …
Perhaps the most obvious challenge, or threat, to the institutional pluralism described and endorsed above is also the most pedestrian: cost. Sameness and standardization are, in many contexts, efficient. It is not, we might worry, only rising tuition expenses, but also a temptation for institutions to mimic and streamline—and, in so doing, to compete and survive—that is the pressing danger. And yet: Variations and diversity among American institutions of higher education are essential; the health of our democracy’s infrastructure depends on them. They should not only be tolerated and welcomed, but also encouraged and incentivized, supported and even subsidized. Those in positions to do so—lawmakers and citizens, teachers and students, scholars and employers—should take up the project of both demanding, and supplying, a healthy infrastructure for expression, research, learning, and flourishing.
