Higher Education's Diversity

There is an increasing emphasis on the importance of diversity in higher education at present. The widely reported affirmative action cases at Michigan University, for example, Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger sparked debates about diversity and affirmative action in American colleges and universities. Supporters of diversity in higher education pointed to benefits to society and students while critics argued that it would be costly to diversify an institution.

Higher institutions of learning are obliged to prepare students for future citizenship responsibilities. Undergrads are not only instructed academically about their job interests but also given training that help them fit into various democratic communities. Interactions with others in school however assist learners in becoming ready for life outside college. This is because arguably, a college is one place where students can acquire skills necessary in making them productive individuals and workers within a multicultural setting.

Research has shown that several backgrounds promote mental and intellectual development needed by college students who want to prosper after graduation (Pascarella et al., 2006). First of all, different environments make children more active learners (Pascarella et al., 2006). Most individuals engage their minds unconsciously without exerting much effort (Nagel & Chavajay, 2012b). For most teachers in class their goal is to encourage thinking that is critical as well as laborious. Students must think reflectively or regulationally when they learn something new since there was nothing like that before hence they have to put in deep thought on how it relates with the new knowledge.

Thinking hard is also encouraged by new situations (Nash, 2007). Those who come from racially homogenous areas may encounter various situations for the first time when they get into multicultural campuses during college years (Banks et al., 2014). In addition to formal contexts such as the classroom, casual encounters occur between students living together in residential halls, eating together in public cafeterias and other places of interest (Seekins & Watanabe, 1991). Further, instability, discontinuity and contradiction are parts of encouraging critical thinking.

These features are based on cognitive-developmental theories that advocate for creating discomfort to enhance critical thinking (Gross et al., 2009). Innovation, unpredictability, inconsistency and discrepancy are examples of the conditions under which hard processing of new information occurs (Kitchener & King, 1981). All these provide a room for intellectual progression to take place among students on diverse campuses.

Social science research shows that people learn better when they are in environments with others. A student’s social setting affects his/her ability to think. Disequilibrium as an example encourages critical thinking hence it is a way of promoting the learning environment. Dysfunctional state can be caused by any idea or comment that is aimed at persuading learners into changing their ideas about a particular thing or subject area. For instance when students from different backgrounds present ideas in alternative ways others would be forced to reconsider their position about the issue at hand.