I want to respond to three of the Hanover Research articles on leadership succession planning and diversity. The first article, “Ensuring Diversity in Tomorrow’s University Management: Succession Planning and Affirmative Action,” discusses the importance and strategies of recruiting diversity into leadership succession planning. The second article, “Trends in Higher Education and the Labor Market: An Environmental Scan for Strategic Planning,” highlights the rise of diverse student bodies as one of the major trends in the Higher Education. Finally, the third article, “Effective Practices for Succession Planning in Higher Education,” states that seeking diversity is challenge and benefit for leadership succession planning. I chose these articles because they all discuss diversity and leadership succession planning, and I have a grievance with each of them.
First, I must state my disappointment in the discussion about diversity. Diversity is not the problem. Recruiting and enrolling diverse groups of students at predominately white colleges and universities will gradually become less of a problem; traditionally underrepresented ethnic groups are increasingly going to college—more so than white students. For example, Hanover says that “at 17.1% and 13.7%, Hispanics and Asians/Pacific Islanders, respectively, have the highest growth rates of the six race/ethnicity categories. [Also,] the number of Black students will grow by 13.2%, while the number of White students will grow only by 0.2%.” Therefore, recruiting diverse groups of students will not be a problem; the actual problem is getting those diverse groups of students to interact. The problem is a lack of multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism is the progression of identifying, appreciating, and incorporating the elements of multiple cultures in order to achieve common goals. Multiculturalism is hard to achieve on a college campus (or anywhere else for that matter) because people fear and avoid what they do not know or understand. For example, there is often ethnic or social-economical clumping in a lunchroom because people gravitate to those who look, sound and act like them. Because the ethnic and socio-economical composition of student bodies is rapidly diversifying, it is important for students to learn how to challenge their understandings about themselves, their culture, and differing cultures. I believe it is the responsibility of higher education to create environments and opportunities for students to be challenged in such a way.
My second grievance with the reading is the lack of discussion of why diversity, or multiculturalism, is needed. I want to explicitly state why we need multiculturalism in order to express its urgency; I can use the Hanover research to support my point. Let’s review the major highlights of the article, Trends in Higher Education and the Labor Market. First, the article highlights a rise in diverse bodies; “between 2010 and 2015, the NCES study anticipates …a more diverse student body in terms of age and race/ethnicity.” Next, Hanover states that US higher education is becoming more globalized by “actively recruiting foreign students and building campuses overseas.” The article also says that there is a continuous rise in the “number of American students going abroad since 2000.” Finally, another article, Ensuring Diversity in Tomorrow’s University Management, lists some challenges that plague senior college administrators. They include “insufficient racial/ethnic diversity,” a “lack of political and philosophical diversity, “and a lack of economic diversity” in their college community.
The common factor in these four statements is the interaction of differing cultural groups. A diverse student body has various ethnic and national cultures living and learning together in close quarters. American students studying abroad are being immersed in a distant culture, just like international students studying in the US are being immersed in the American culture. Multiculturalism is needed to prepare students, staff, and faculty for the meeting of new cultures. In order for everyone to successfully coexist, the college community must challenge the way they communicate, think, and collaborate. This will be difficult because now the college community must consider differing, maybe even conflicting, ideas, beliefs, needs, and wants. But practicing multiculturalism will manage this conflict; it will push the community to learn, respect, appreciate and apply the differences of those within their community to achieve a greater goal. Without multiculturalism, the campus may isolate minority groups, disrespect their beliefs, and disregard their ideas and needs. Discrimination, xenophobia, and racism will persist and grow.
Multiculturalism is important, and it will take a strong leader to implement and support it. Succession leadership planning is a great opportunity to bring in a leader that has the motivation, experience and skills to introduce multiculturalism to a college campus. Finding such a leader would require college hiring committees to alter the way they seek and hire senior administrative leaders. While many colleges “espouse the benefits of a diverse student body, faculty, and administrative staff, the upper levels of administration at many schools remain static in terms of ethnicity and cultural heritage.” For example, a 2005 study by the Chronicle found that 88.6 percent, of university presidents surveyed, identified themselves as Caucasian. Over 80 percent of the nation’s top academic administrators (titled ‘President’) were male. The high selection of older, white, male presidents most likely is due to the fact that most college senior administrators are also older, white, and male; again, people gravitate to those who look, sound, and act like them. Practicing multiculturalism would require hiring committees at colleges need to step out of their comfort zone and seek a new way to recruit candidates. The Hanover report suggest that the hiring committees seek recommendations for candidates from those within the college community. Hanover also suggest that the hiring committee advertise the job opening in publications and on websites that that cater to minorities, women, or professionals of another industry. I want to add that diversifying the hiring committee itself will cultivate results. As mentioned twice earlier, people gravitate to those who look, sound and act like them; this action is magnified when it’s a group of the same ethnic and social-economic people. By adding college members of diverse backgrounds, in terms of ethnicity, age, economic, nationality, or position, the hiring committee can more accurately represent the needs, concerns, and ideas of their college community. With these concerns and preference represented, the committee can evaluate and prioritize these items in order to create a profile of an ideal candidate. Ultimately, the committee can recruit and hire a candidate that represents the ideas and needs of the college community. In other words, they can start practicing multiculturalism.
