The best DEI program: better college teaching

Here’s a quick quiz: What percentage of American college students attend hard-to-get-into schools, the ones that admit one-quarter or fewer of their applicants?

The answer is 6. Six percent. That’s it.

But those are the schools that I attended, that my parents attended, that my kids attended. They’re the schools where my wife and I have worked. So we think that’s what “college” is.

It isn’t.

Most colleges in America aren’t selective. They take anyone — or almost anyone — who can pay.

That also means they haven’t been affected by affirmative action, which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down last month. Of the roughly 4,000 schools where you can get a two- or four-year degree in the United States, an estimated 200 have used race in their admission decisions.

Those schools enroll about 2% of African American, Hispanic, and Native students at four-year colleges in the country. The majority of Black and brown students attend colleges that accept at least three-quarters of their applicants.

Affirmative action didn’t matter to these students, and its demise won’t matter to them, either.

So what would?

When you ask higher education leaders what students of color need, their first answer is money. And, of course, they’re right. Black and Latino students are more likely to drop out of public colleges than white students, in part because they’re often holding down jobs and caring for dependents. They also have higher average student loan burdens, and they’re more likely to default on these loans.

» READ MORE: Ron DeSantis is right: DEI programs are a bad idea | Jonathan Zimmerman

The next common answer focuses on fighting racism. In a recent survey, 17% of Black students at public institutions and 23% of Black students at private, not-for-profit colleges reported experiencing discrimination at their schools. So we have created offices of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to assist these students, and — we hope — improve the overall racial climate on campus.

The DEI offices have come under fire from Republican lawmakers in at least a dozen states, who have proposed more than 30 bills to restrict or ban DEI in higher education. Many Black and brown students and faculty have denounced these measures as attacks on their identities, and I think they’re right. But we should also be honest enough to admit that some of our DEI interventions haven’t worked.

Consider diversity training, a centerpiece of American DEI for several decades. As sociologists Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev have shown, most diversity training doesn’t reduce negative attitudes and behaviors around race; instead, it’s more likely to reinforce them. That’s not going to help our Black and brown students — or anyone else — on campus.

Here’s what would: better teaching.

Weak instruction remains endemic in American higher education. Poorly designed classes, with no clear objectives. Dull assignments and tests, which measure memorization rather than understanding. And yes, disengaged professors, who have received little or no formal preparation for teaching.

How does this hurt students of color? Because American K-12 education is so unequal, these students may come to college with fewer academic skills. If they receive lackluster instruction with little opportunity to fill in any gaps in learning, it should be no surprise when some fail or drop out.

But we also know that high-quality teaching can help them succeed. When Black and brown students receive instruction from prepared teachers who attend carefully to their progress — and hold them to high standards — they match or outpace white students.

High-quality teaching can help them succeed.

At the University of Texas, for example, chemistry professor David Laude found that low-income and first-generation students — who had previously received lower grades in his introductory course — rose to the class average when he placed them in a smaller section, where they also received extra support from tutors and advisers.

Racism — and racial inequality — is real. But we can never overcome them without improving our teaching. With the end of affirmative action, which never made a difference to most Black and brown students anyway, let’s renew our focus on what does: classroom instruction. The best DEI program isn’t another diversity training. It’s a well-taught class.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of “The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America,” which was published in 2020 by Johns Hopkins University Press.