Today I sat through a presentation from the Dean of the College of Engineering about the statistics for the incoming class. This included how many people were accepted, what percentage of people were accepted, demographics, and a lot more about study centers and information that is useful to the incoming class. I was there to supervise and monitor the presentation but I ended up doing a lot of thinking.
In total there are approximately 700 incoming Engineering undergraduates, of which 25% are female, and 8.3% are "under-represented minorities". In total, roughly 500 of those students are white males of varying affluence and backgrounds.
This class was lauded as being one of the most diverse incoming engineering classes at my college, and it raised the question of if that is actually a diverse class. Are we celebrating a low bar for what qualifies as diverse? What does it even mean to be a "diverse college" in the first place?
Sometime next week I'm going to have another topic to bring up with all of you that follows this higher education question.
I'd read that as "we have enough students who aren't white, male and affluent to demonstrate that we are not creating barriers to people who aren't white, male and affluent enrolling here in addition to those that are beyond our control." Reflecting the demographics of the population as a whole would be too high a bar, unless the pool of applicants reflects the demographics of the population as a whole.
I think my bar is set too high. I don't expect it to be some melting pot of cultures and ethnicities but I don't think parading around on the premise that this is a very diverse is the right then to be doing.
RIT. I'm in a class of about fifty people for my year and major. Probably 30% female, and two people total that are not Caucasian. It's probably worth noting that I'm the type of person who is willingly watching a three piece band from Nairobi perform because I find it interesting.
The female engineers at my university had a saying concerning their prospective dating pool: "The odds are good, but the goods are odd".