Higher Education's Diversity

In the current period, a growing emphasis has been placed on the need of diversity in higher education. The well-publicized affirmative action lawsuits at the Michigan University (i.e., Grutter v. Bollinger, Gratz v. Bollinger) reignited the discussion over the role of diversity and affirmative action at higher education institutions across the United States. Advocates of diversity in higher education noted the advantages to society and students while opponents cited the perceived expense of diversifying an institution.

Higher education institutions are responsible for training learners for their roles as citizens in the future. Undergrads not only obtain education relevant to their job aspirations, but they also receive informal instruction on how to live inside a diverse democratize community. Their everyday encounters in college assist to prepare students for life beyond college. Arguably, college is one of the only places in life where students may learn skills that will help them become productive professionals and individuals in a culturally varied community.

Scholars have claimed that various contexts aid in the psychological and intellectual development required for college students to have successful lives after graduation. To begin with, different surroundings encourage kids to become more engaged learners. Most people participate in mental processes that are automatic and involve minimal effort. Most teachers' purpose in the class is to encourage critical and laborious thinking. When students learn anything new, they must engage in regulated or effortful thinking since they have no past experience with the topic and therefore must consider deeply how they will fit the new knowledge.

New circumstances also encourage difficult thinking. Students whose born and raised in racially homogeneous areas may encounter a variety of unique scenarios when they arrive on a multicultural university campus. In addition to formal contexts such as the classroom, casual encounters in resident halls, public eating areas, and other locations give students an opportunity to meet with people from other backgrounds. Instability, discontinuity, and contradiction are further features that encourage critical thinking.

These features are derived from cognitive-developmental theories that contend that some amount of pain and uncertainty is required to encourage critical and effortful thinking. Innovation, unpredictability, inconsistency, and discrepancy are all factors that contribute to the laborious processing of newly discovered information. Diverse college campuses create an atmosphere for these processes to take place, allowing students to flourish intellectually.

Students are enhanced in a learning environment, according to social science study. The social environment of a pupil influences his or her ability to think. Disequilibrium is one method that enhances the learning environment by encouraging critical thinking. When an idea is offered that encourages pupils to reconsider their beliefs about a certain concept, disequilibrium is established. This might happen when a learner from a particular background presents a topic from a new angle and, as an outcome, encourages others to reconsider their beliefs about the subject.