Educating the workforce for the 21st century: The impact of diversity on undergraduate students' pluralistic orientation

This study extends the research evidence used to document the educational benefits of diversity in the University of Michigan's affirmative action case and examines how undergraduate students in different disciplinary contexts acquire a set of pluralistic skills and dispositions necessary for today's diverse workforce and society. This study adapted two theoretical models derived from higher education and social psychology, emphasizing the role of structural diversity, college diversity experiences, and psychological attributes in understanding students' development of a pluralistic orientation. Data came from the Preparing College Students for a Diverse Democracy project---a longitudinal study of incoming freshmen in 2000 and a follow-up in 2002 at nine public universities. The sample consisted of 4,697 students who represented six disciplinary contexts: arts/humanities, life sciences, business, social sciences, engineering, and education/social work.; Structural equation modeling was used to develop a common model of student change based on the conceptual framework and a series of multiple regression analyses. The Pluralistic Orientation Model provided a good fit to the data for each of the academic disciplines, indicating the relevance of college diversity experiences for all major groups despite differences in participation levels. Co-curricular diversity experiences indirectly influenced students' pluralistic orientation based on the amount of intergroup learning they gleaned from the experiences; similar indirect effects were found for students in the social sciences and education/social work who enrolled in diversity courses, although strong direct effects were uncovered for engineering and life science students. In addition, students' positive interactions across race were associated with increased intergroup learning, reduced intergroup anxiety, and stronger pluralistic orientations; students' negative interactions produced the opposite effects. For all academic major groups, higher levels of structural diversity were associated with increased opportunities for positive interactions across race, which indirectly influenced students' intergroup learning and second-year pluralistic orientations. Further, students' participation in events related to September 11th directly influenced their participation in college diversity experiences. Key implications for secondary and higher education underscore the potential for educational interventions that include diversity content and structured interactions across race to promote stronger orientations toward pluralism for all students.