Study Finds Diversity Officers Contribute Nothing Positive to a University
“The Impact of Chief Diversity Officers on Diverse Faculty Hiring”
Diversity administrators are nothing more than a new class of pointless, highly paid campus bureaucrats.
PJ Media reports:
STUDY: Diversity Officers ‘Contribute Nothing Positive to a University’
A new Baylor University study has discovered that Chief Diversity Officers — who are typically paid upwards of $180,000 — are ineffective at one of their major job responsibilities: increasing diversity among faculty and administrators.
The study, “The Impact of Chief Diversity Officers on Diverse Faculty Hiring” was published in September by four Baylor University professors, including Steven Bradley, a professor of entrepreneurship at the school.
“Three years ago, there was a campus-wide discussion of whether to hire a CDO,” Bradley told PJ Media on Thursday. Supporters of the CDO position claimed it would help increase faculty diversity, in turn helping minority students feel safe on campus.
The summary of a 2016 campus survey put it more bluntly.
“The lack of [minority] representation among faculty sends a message for women and minorities to not bother applying to Baylor, [and that] the work environment is not safe or welcoming,” the report said.
Since then, Baylor officials appear to have punted. The prospect of hiring a diversity officer was too concerning for some school officials, who feared it would detract from the school’s Christian identity, according to the Waco-Tribune Herald.
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Comments
They needed a study for this? How dense are they?
I was thinking the same thing.
Now I would like to propose a follow up study on if CDO’s actually decrease diversity on campus, this study of course should include a comparison of liberal vs conservative.
So, what exactly was this study?
They discussed having a CDO and after 3 years found that some in the administration had trouble with the idea, so they abandoned the idea. Did they check with other institutions to see if the addition of a CDO pushed their diversity in the direction they wanted? Was the expense worth it?
From what is here, it looks like someone with some juice decided that diversity was in conflict with the school’s Christian foundations; that does not sound very Christian.
I do not disagree with the basic premise that Diversity Officers are a waste of time and money, however.
I will correct myself. Thinking about this, I went back and chased the link to PJMedia. There was a study.
Once the University abandoned the idea, one of the committee members was still interested in the question, so he did a study. Here is a clip from the PJM article:
“To examine this, Bradley and his team sleuthed through hiring data of 466 universities. Using data from 2001-2016, they looked at when universities hired a CDO, and assessed if the hiring corresponded to any increase in racial or ethnic minorities being hired.
“After analyzing 466 universities and nearly 12,000 new hirees, the researchers concluded that there’s not enough “significant statistical evidence” to support the claim that CDOs benefit campus diversity. At all. But why?”
And so we learn that there is a national trade group of collegiate diversity officers. Yes. The National Association for Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE). The researcher asked them for some data on faculty diversity attributed to hiring a CDO and they were unable to provide any.
In my humble opinion, this was the lede.
How the heck do they increase diversity?
The school attracts a certain diversity of people based on what people interested in the school perceive. To change that diversity … requires that the college “recruit” people from the types of people they feel they are lacking … at the neglect of everyone else. That’s prejudicial from the outset.
Q: What is the most important mission of campus Chief Diversity Officers?
A: To justify the continued existence of their positions.
Believe me, I know. I worked at a large research university for 21 years.