Jay P. Greene, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, says the theory of increasing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) on university campuses has created a burgeoning bureaucracy with a rapidly growing influence and spiraling costs.
Greene said the central purpose of DEI efforts in universities is, in theory, to create a more positive and welcoming environment for students. However, there appears to be little relationship between DEI staffing and the diversity climate on campus, according to his research.
For example, the University of Michigan has the largest DEI staff on multiple measures, but only 72% of students are satisfied with the campus climate. Among under-represented minority students, that figure drops to 62% for undergraduate students, and 55% for graduate students.
Jay P. Greene
| Heritage Foundation
In contrast, Mississippi State University has a smaller DEI staff, but 72% of students report being accepted, respected and appreciated by students different from them. These findings suggest that DEI staffing may not be a key factor in creating a positive and inclusive campus environment.
Greene, a senior research fellow in the Center for Education Policy of the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity at The Heritage Foundation, co-wrote a study of the rise of DEI on campuses with James D. Paul, a distinguished doctoral fellow at the University of Arkansas’ Department of Education Reform.
Their research suggests that large DEI “bureaucracies” in universities may make little positive contribution to campus climate. Instead, they may be better understood as a signal of adherence to ideological, political and activist goals.
“I don't think it's gained popularity on campus. I don't think it's particularly popular at all among faculty or students, but I think the size of the bureaucracies has grown dramatically,” Greene told Lone Star Standard. “I don't think there's actually a strong constituency for these bureaucracies. But there is a political momentum for them that serves the ambitions of senior administrators. That's why we're seeing them.”
He said DEI has been used to create a set of bureaucracies with the ostensible purpose of welcoming students, faculty and staff from different backgrounds to create the conditions to help them thrive.
“That's what its purpose is supposed to be, and that can be a noble purpose,” Greene said. “But it has turned into an organization to promote the political orthodoxy that university leaders believe is desirable or create those conditions, which is contrary to the true goals of diversity and the academic freedom that we should expect to see in higher education.”
He said the main constituency for DEI are the people who work in that bureaucracy and the patronage, power and employment that accompanies it.
“So there are these are very good jobs,” Greene said. “There are more and more of them being created and creating a political base on campus. So I think that's one of their goals. I think another goal is to promote a particular political view, and that political view does not have widespread traction within the United States, within the state of Texas and even within the student body or the faculty of Texas public universities.”
Greene said it’s not an especially liberal point of view, at least not in the classic sense of the term. It might be called “progressive,” but he said it draws its heritage as a kind of “soft form of Marxism.”
The high DEI staffing levels also suggest that these programs are “bloated” relative to academic pursuits and may be more effective at dividing than including students, his research indicates. Without evidence that DEI initiatives are meeting their goals, it is unclear why public funding should be used to support them, Greene has written. It may be more effective to reduce and restructure DEI staff in order to achieve legitimate goals at a lower cost.
To collect information on the size of DEI bureaucracies in higher education, the study’s authors examined the 65 universities that are members of the five “power” athletic conferences, the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big 10, the Big 12, the Pac-12 and the Southeastern Conference.
“The focus was on these universities because they tend to be large, public institutions chosen by many students simply because of geographic proximity," Greene said. These universities tend not to be highly selective institutions with explicit DEI missions intended to attract ideologically aligned students,” the report states. “Instead, Power Five universities tend to be mainstream institutions that students select — and state legislatures support — without much thought to their political and cultural aims.
These 65 universities serve more 2.2 million students, representing about 16% of all students enrolled in four-year universities.
“They're not faculty. They're staff,” Greene told Lone Star Standard. “And staff at universities have grown dramatically, much more rapidly than faculty have."
The report shows how the average university currently has 4.2 DEI personnel for every one American with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance person. From the data:
- The University of Michigan lists 14.8 people tasked to promoting DEI for every one person responsible for providing services to students with disabilities.
- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has the second-highest ratio of DEI to ADA personnel at 13.3.
- That ratio at the University of Virginia is 10.4, while at the University of Louisville it is 10.0.
- Boston College lists 8.5 people devoted to promoting DEI for each ADA compliance staffer.
- At the University of Iowa the ratio is 8.4.
It’s evident in the Lone Star State as well, Greene said.
“If you look at University of Texas, we found there were 45 DEI staff at the university," he said. "That's three times as many staff as they have for the Americans with Disabilities' Act compliance. It's actually 2.5 DEI staff for every 100 faculty."
Private universities like Baylor have much smaller DEI staffs, Greene noted.
The study concludes that hiring more people for DEI roles and creating new units with more administrators advancing political agendas is unlikely to make students feel welcome and create a diverse, equitable, and inclusive learning environment. These approaches are more indicative of the increasing ideological imbalance in universities than a genuine effort to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Greene said many people, who are uneasy about or opposed to the power DEI is obtaining, are afraid to protest.
“They have enormous professional incentives to actually increase DEI investments as opposed to scaling back," he said. "There is a type of extortion racket going on here where the DEI staff and the small, relatively small number of kind of radical students who they help organize and amplify, they threaten trouble on campus if the things they want are not attended to by administrators, chief of which is they want more power and staff."
He said he doesn’t think senior administrators are deeply invested in this effort.
“I don't think they care, really. They're also not opposed to it ideologically,” Greene said. “Again, they don't care, but they want to advance. And the easiest thing for them to do to advance is to use your taxpayer dollars, your tuition dollars, to hire more DEI staff to avoid trouble.
“And so the only thing that'll get senior university administrators to stand up to DEI is if they feel the heat from policymakers, boards of trustees, powerful alumni,” he added.
Greene said it’s a matter of when enough people decide that this has gone far enough.
“There's a high level of coercion involved in their efforts," he said. "Until people develop the courage and coordination to stand up and resist these efforts, then they'll keep spreading.”
Greene said there is a growing awareness of the rise of DEI on college campuses. He believes there will be a correction made soon.
“I think as state policymakers in Texas begin to make this an issue and introduce legislation on it and begin to organize boards of trustees and powerful alumni to lobby on it, then senior university administrators will flip,” Greene said. “And we've seen this actually, we saw this occur in Florida, where 28 university presidents issued a statement about how they were going to rein in DEI after Gov. (Ron) DeSantis appoints a group of trustees to one of the public institutions who say they're going to dismantle this. They see the shot across the bow, they see the threat, and they cater to it.”
He expects to see similar measures taken in Austin.
“I think this is going to be on the agenda this legislative session,” Greene said. “And this is clearly an issue.”
The focus of Greene's current research examines the effects of education on character formation and civic values.
His past research has covered a variety of subjects, from randomized controlled trials of private school choice programs to the effects of student field trips to art museums and the theater. His most recent book is a co-edited volume, “Religious Liberty and Education: A Case Study of Yeshivas vs. New York.”
Greene, who formerly taught at the University of Arkansas, received his B.A. in history from Tufts University and earned his Ph.D. in government from Harvard University.
