Today I sat through a presentation from the Dean of the College of Engineering about the statistics for the incoming class. This included how many people were accepted, what percentage of people were accepted, demographics, and a lot more about study centers and information that is useful to the incoming class. I was there to supervise and monitor the presentation but I ended up doing a lot of thinking.
In total there are approximately 700 incoming Engineering undergraduates, of which 25% are female, and 8.3% are "under-represented minorities". In total, roughly 500 of those students are white males of varying affluence and backgrounds.
This class was lauded as being one of the most diverse incoming engineering classes at my college, and it raised the question of if that is actually a diverse class. Are we celebrating a low bar for what qualifies as diverse? What does it even mean to be a "diverse college" in the first place?
Sometime next week I'm going to have another topic to bring up with all of you that follows this higher education question.