A new report from the Heritage Foundation concluded that there is a problem of bloat among diversity staff at universities.
“After reviewing publicly accessible websites, these authors found that the average university they sampled listed more than 45 people as having formal responsibility for promoting DEI goals,” Jay Greene and James Paul wrote.
They concluded that “high DEI staffing levels suggest that these programs are bloated relative to academic pursuits and do not contribute to reported student well-being on campus.”
For example, the University of Michigan has 163 diversity officials. This does not count professors who advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, but only staffed positions with a singular focus on these issues.
At other places, there are more people hired to work on DEI efforts than there are to assist students with disabilities.
“At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, there were 13.3 times as many people devoted to promoting DEI as providing services to people with disabilities,” the researchers said.
Furthermore, students do not feel served by these numerous diversity staff members.
Paul and Greene said:
The data collected show that DEI efforts involve a vast bureaucracy.In addition, based on a review of climate surveys administered to students at many of these same universities, the size of the DEI bureaucracy bears little relationship to students’ satisfaction with their college experience, in general—or with their diversity experience, in particular
For budget cutters, the researchers reached a clear conclusion: There is not a benefit to diversity hires.
“DEI bureaucracies appear to increase administrative bloat without contributing to the stated goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion,” the pair wrote. “Employing dozens of DEI professionals—in the form of chief diversity officers, assistant deans for diversity, and directors for inclusive excellence—may be better understood as jobs programs subsidizing political activism without improving campus climate.”
Read the report and Federalist essay.
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