Newsletter

April 2002

SATIRE Addressing the Faculty: Student Diversity Mismach

Peter Herman

University of Toronto has
been struggling for a while now to arrange things so that the faculty complement
more closely resembles the student body in terms of diversity. We haven’t
yet got to the point of advertising for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered,
and queer” professors, but that’s only a matter of time. For the moment,
we are focusing on sex and race, endeavouring with only limited success
to bring our faculty complement into synchrony with our student body. Because
the student body is so dramatically diverse, however – according to some
counts both women and visible minorities now comprise over 50% of the student
body, making these minorities majorities – faculty recruitment efforts
continue to fall short. Is there any hope of recruiting enough Asian women
faculty to mentor all the Asian women students? We fear not. Our concern
about matching faculty and student demographics, however, must not breed
despair. Rather, we propose a simple plan to rectify the situation, by
bringing faculty and student race and sex characteristics quickly into
harmony.

The basic problem is that
hiring suitable faculty is difficult. There are only so many desirable
faculty to go around, and U of T is not particularly well-positioned to
hire scholars with just the right genetic make-up. Our salaries aren’t
particularly competitive, even within Canada. The weather sucks. The facilities
are run down. Classes are overcrowded. And things are likely to just keep
getting worse. Realistically, there’s no way that we can change the faculty
make-up to correspond to the student make-up within the foreseeable future.
Unless….

Unlike faculty, students
are easy to come by. There are thousands and thousands of them clamouring
to get in, and every year we get a new batch of applicants. In fact, we
can pretty much pick and choose which students get in. So far, we have
been pretty much oblivious to student genetics when making admission decisions,
but in the interests of fairness, this policy must change. If we are to
achieve an appropriate and equitable faculty: student diversity ratio,
we must start applying the same criteria to student applicants as we do
to faculty applicants. In fact, if we implement a more diligent “diversity
screening” among our student applicants, we can eliminate the “diversity
gap” within 4 years.

We begin with a faculty survey.
God knows there must be some data somewhere on the sex and racial composition
of the faculty; in fact, we know there are, because people are always complaining
about the figures. So, starting with the faculty complement, we then proceed
to establish student recruitment guidelines so as to bring the students
and faculty into greater congruence. If the faculty is, say, 70% male and
80% white, then starting this Spring, we must admit student applicants
in corresponding percentages. Before you know it, the faculty will offer
a perfect mirror of the student body. Because of the speed with which student
admissions can be adjusted, from one year to the next, any changes in the
faculty composition can be rapidly reflected in the student body. If –
as a result of the vicissitudes of faculty hiring, retirement, defection,
and death – the sex or ethnic make-up of the faculty changes, it’s a simple
enough matter to admit students accordingly, so as to maintain a perfect
balance. Some may object that basing student admissions on characteristics
such as sex and race is unfair (especially to those saddled with the “wrong”
characteristics). But no – one will argue with the need to have the faculty
fully represent the characteristics of the student body. In fact, U of
T is publically committed to achieving this form of equity, even if it
means adopting “affirmative” recruitment standards. The only novelty in
our proposal is that we apply the standards to the students rather than
to the faculty, in the interests of simplicity and speed¹.
If you have an easier and quicker way to establish a proportionate faculty:
student diversity ratio, we’d like to hear it.

¹ This
scheme has the additional advantage of preventing the stigma of affirmative-action
hiring from undermining the self-esteem of the hired individual.
Faculty will be spared the ignominy of having been chosen for the “wrong”
reasons. Students, on the other hand, couldn’t care less why they’re
chosen, as long as they’re chosen (as was made clear when our law students
knowingly submitted inflated grade reports when applying for summer jobs
– only one of the myriad instances nowadays of student cheating at the
university level).

Reprinted
from Psyclops, February 2002, edited by P. Herman who is a professor in
Psychology Department, at the University of Toronto.