The nation's changing demographics will present major challenges for higher education in the coming years, said Kenneth Prewitt of Columbia University.

The good news, demographically, is that for the foreseeable future, there will be a replenishment of the younger cohort coming along to enroll in higher education, said Kenneth Prewitt, Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs, School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, during his remarks at the Presidents Institute. “But American higher education will become more ethnically, religiously, culturally, and racially diverse because that’s the nature of the American population.”
     These developments will present challenges for the nation’s colleges and universities, he said during his address, “Demography, Diversity, and What’s Ahead for America’s Colleges.” Prewitt noted the enormous population shift to the southwest; the continuing movement from rural to urban areas, which now include “ring cities,” or small cities that have grown up around major metropolises; and the biggest demographic change in America’s population—that of racial, ethnic, and national origin.
     Prewitt emphasized that historically, while the nation diversified and transformed demographically in the 19th century, “higher education steadily expanded its number and type of institutions, and the number of students admitted—but it simply ignored some races, religions, cultures and, indeed, a gender: women, considered ineligible for promotion into elite circles.” Then came the GI Bill and civil rights movement, and higher education responded by broadening its definition of education.
     “A social justice mission gets added to the definition of what we think higher education is about in this country. And with that idea planted in the sixties and the seventies, the task broadened. Social justice was quickly seen to be about more than redressing the legacy of slavery. It was about all groups historically discriminated against–—Native Indians, Hispanics, and Asians. Civil rights became minority rights, and in due course, the minority rights revolution encompassed other groups historically discriminated against, in particular women and the disabled, who had been denied access to labor markets and educational opportunity.”
     “So America’s story is a demographic story, and is a story of growth and diversification. The American higher education story was, for much of its history, a story about the failure to match this demographic diversification. It was a story of restriction and exclusion. The rules changed radically in mid-century for racial minorities, ethnic minorities, national origin minorities, and especially for women—and now, of course, the term diversity is widely embraced,” Prewitt said.
     “If we look at how diversity is used by American universities and colleges, we see repeated references to groups historically discriminated against. But higher education does not stop at this point. The diversity initiative extends well beyond compensating for earlier discrimination. Many colleges and universities note geographic spread, how many students are foreign, how many states or foreign countries are represented on campus. Religious diversity is frequently mentioned, as is economic background. Fewer, but still a noticeable proportion, mention diverse lifestyles and sexual orientations, and stress how many different intellectual persuasions are found on campus.”
     Today, Prewitt said, “higher education is articulating a new theory about what it takes to educate successfully. It is as if we had shifted pedagogy from the curriculum committee to the admissions office. Indeed, the rhetoric about diversity found on campus websites implies that the failure to produce a diverse student body impairs the quality of education.” However, he noted that a search of the term “diversity” on about 50 CIC campus websites produced very little information about diversity initiatives. He noted that “17 states have now introduced bills (none of these will pass, but nevertheless...) requiring that institutions of higher education diversify their faculty in terms of political party affiliation or political orientation…. They are making the argument that if you want to take the word ‘diversity’ seriously, as a theory of education, then we’re going to make sure that the faculty is diverse in terms of what it thinks and knows and talks about.”
     While he noted that what makes sense for large research universities does not necessarily make sense for much smaller institutions, Prewitt cautioned the CIC presidents “that we have let loose an argument about education which suggests we can only educate if the student body represents everything. And that will not sit well, and indeed may be incorrect, with respect to smaller, private colleges, which have a different kind of mission.” Nevertheless, he added, “some of you will have to become more diverse because that’s going to be your student body. Some of you will want to become more diverse because you also believe that will enrich the educational experience. In the aggregate, higher education has to reflect the demography if we’re going to be a robust part of the American scene…. But that doesn’t mean that what has to be true in the aggregate is true in each particular. It remains for you, it seems to me, to begin to articulate that argument.”
     Prewitt concluded by urging conference participants “to think hard about the consequences, the implications, of allowing this vocabulary [of diversity] to…take center stage in how we think about our educational mission.”
     The full text of Prewitt’s speech is not available, but he has provided supplemental material with much of the same information on CIC's website.

Click here to view supplemental material provided by Prewitt.