Managing 

Diversity & Inclusion

Dr. Atasi Mohanty
Centre for Educational Technology
IIT Kharagpur
India

Email: atasim@cet.iitkgp.ernet.in
atasi0@gmail.com

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 Managing Diversity & Inclusion
 Diversity & Inclusion are the two sides of the same coin 

 Identifying goals for diversity :

1. Achieving a representative profile of staff & students 
2. Ethnicity / Socio –economic  background /prior 
attainments should not always be the intention of admissions & recruitments 
3. Gender balance to be maintained 
4. Inclusion to provide equal opportunities to all
5. Leaders’ commitment to equality & justice for all
6. Educational leader should be free from any bias due to cognitive anxiety or ethnocentric 
stereotypes 

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 Managing Diversity & Inclusion

7. Increasing cultural awareness – dimension 
a. Individualism/Collectivism 

b. Uncertainty Avoidance 

c. Masculinity/Feminity – Values 

d. Gender Role Specification

e. Time Perception

f. Cultural Practices/Rituals

g. Culture’s Collective Goals – Long term /Short term 

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 Managing Diversity in Education Sector
• Diversity in education represents a broad range of ideas & initiatives to create learning
environments that are safe, inclusive & equitable for as many identities as possible

• In this millennium diversity has affected nearly every aspect of education i.e.,
access & equity, teaching methods , students’ learning, quality, management, research
priorities, social relevance, autonomy, finance etc.

• Recognizing, fostering, & developing sensitivity to the needs of people (in various identity
groups) are primary aims of educational diversity

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Two Types of Diversity:

• First one is structural & the second one is interactional diversity

• The structural diversity refers to the numerical & proportional representation of students from
different ethnic or racial groups in the student population (Hurtado et al., 1999)

• The second type of diversity is characterized by the interactions that students have with
difference, diverse ideas & information as well as by the interactions that they have with diverse
people

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The impact of each type of diversity is complimentary to & enhanced by the presence of the
others

Structural diversity is a necessary precursor for diverse interactions to occur

Diverse ideas & information emerge largely due to the presence & effects of diverse people
(Gurin, 1999)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5goIZylAnBY

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 Outcomes of Diversity: Research Findings
• Three major types of outcomes that emerge from campus diversity (Gurin, 1999)

• The first one, learning outcomes refer to active learning processes in which students become
involved while studying in college, the engagement & motivation they exhibit, the learning &
refinement of intellectual & academic skills, the values they place on these skills after they
leave the campus;

• The second one, democracy outcomes refer to the ways in which higher education prepares
students to become involved as active participants in a society i.e., becoming increasingly
diverse & complex ;

• Three major categories of engagements such as citizenship engagements, cultural engagement

& compatibility of difference – characterize democracy outcomes (Gurin, 1999)

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• Citizenship engagement refers to the students’ interest in active participation in community
social service, & motivation in influencing social & political order

• Cultural engagement refers to students’ levels of cultural awareness, racial tolerance &
commitment to promote inter‐cultural understanding

• Compatibility of differences refers to an understanding by students that certain common

values exist across diverse ethnic groups, & group conflict often can be constructive &
beneficial if used appropriately ; it relates to the students’ ability to live & work effectively in
a diverse cultural set‐up (Gurin, 1999)

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• Thirdly, the process outcomes measure the students’ satisfaction, perception of campus climate etc.
which reflect the ways in which students perceive that diversity has enriched their college/campus
experiences

• The final outcome is the material benefit that students gain (for example, higher pay
package/salary/perks) from attending diverse colleges & institutes

• Literature on diversity & research evidence also support that greater exposure to diversity leads to
growth in democracy outcomes

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 Changing Forces: Current Scenario

• Post‐globalization the educational institutions are operating in a new environment ;

• Colleges & universities now‐a‐days are struggling with new changing forces i.e., confronting younger
& techno‐savvy as well as older & career‐driven students, unprecedented competition in the job
market , quality, accountability, & affordability in the global context

• The higher education today is facing the new challenges like a) student engagement, b) institutional
accountability c) revenue generation d) global competition so on

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• The impact of global warming, climate change & the emergence of environmental sustainability
have emerged as key political, national & international research agenda for the new century

• These are the global stresses that include population stress, energy stress, environmental stress,
climate stress, economic stress (e.g., inflation, economic recession, widening gap between rich &
poor classes) which directly or indirectly influence higher education system (Thomas Homer‐Dixon,
2006)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTXtT05782Y

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• Due to IT revolution, & globalization we are also witnessing major transformations in knowledge
sector like virtual universities, on‐line courses, e‐learning packages etc.

• A large number of globally networked companies are coming up in education industry

• In this changing world, especially in Asian region China, Japan, Taiwan, & India are the new world
players ,both educationally as well as economically

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• In other European countries also significant developments are taking place such as
implementation of Bologna & Washington Accord guidelines for accreditation, quality &
comparability of higher education courses

• In India the Ministry of Human Resource Development has taken some initiatives like ‐
implementing NAB (National Accreditation Board) for accreditation of higher and technical
courses;

• Major pedagogic research projects under the ‘Mission of Education Through ICT’, redesigning
the technical & science graduation courses as per the pedagogic principles and improving the
quality & comparability of its higher/technical education degrees in International job market

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• Today, the focus of higher education system has been placed on some critical issues like‐ easy
access, affordability, preparing techno‐savvy & independent learners, interdisciplinary research,
economic development, international competitiveness, intellectual capital, socio‐ political
reforms etc.

• In today’s world spreading connectivity, allied with the massive creation of open source of
educational resources through Internet, Google, You‐tube, Wikipedia etc. could create the radical
reduction in costs necessary for higher education to serve the four billion people at the bottom of
world’s economic pyramid, which would again generate over a hundred million more students
across the world (Daniel, 2007)

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• Many countries are visualizing the rapid expansion of higher education as the key to their
transition of status from developing to developed nations

• Due to the dramatic rise in aspiration & participation in higher education, increased pressure has
been created on funding of higher education institutions, especially from state sources

• Considerable variation among the countries on the extent to which funding for higher education &
research comes from government, charitable or business sources

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• The per capita decrease in state funding has triggered a parallel pressure for universities &
technical education institutes to generate new sources of income

• The drop in the proportion of higher education funding coming from government and the
concomitant pressure to generate alternative sources of income has led educational institutes
in many countries to focus on profit, commodification of knowledge & its marketing ;

• No more emphasis on the traditional conception & value of a university as a community of

scholars & an abode of learning

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• A new trend of entrepreneurship within the education or knowledge industry has come up with
new vocabularies like students as customers, guardians as stake‐holders, intellectual capital,
copyright, intellectual property right, outsourcing of knowledge resources, knowledge
management and so on;

• A new range of income‐generating ventures like private colleges, technical/vocational institutes

with much higher risk profile like lower quality, high /escalating capitation fees, fake university
degrees, commercialization of research & teaching emerged

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• This in turn has encouraged a wide range of risk management & quality control measures like
rapid increase in government monitoring, auditing, & setting up the autonomous bodies to
maintain quality education;

• To what extent these are being followed & implemented is a big question;

• Due to escalating fees in developed nations, the students from these countries are choosing to
study & take their degrees from reputed institutes of developing Asian countries or through
on‐line courses

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• At the cheaper end of the international student market, on‐line learning providers are also expected
to make significant incursions ;

• Across the world higher education systems are being reshaped through greater competition among
established institutions, the growth of new providers, including non‐profit & proprietary providers,
open universities, & the growing capacity of distance education & e‐learning;

• The new millennial generation of higher education students is having diverse & different
expectations from that of the older generation students

• Sally Nimon (2007) has identified some distinguishing characteristics of this new generation
learners, such as‐

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• i) they are hesitant to engage in long‐term planning & tend to focus on the more immediate
benefits of their education;

• ii) do not give much importance to the notion of standards of achievement & expect a pass for
anything they submit, irrespective of its quality;

• iii) they are likely to have different attitude to web‐based plagiarism & knowledge;

• iv) expect everything to be readily available & not as self‐reliant as the previous generations;

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• v) use the peer group reference for making any academic decision like ‐where to enroll & which
subject to take, etc.;

• The question is how to cater the needs of this present generation of techno‐savvy learners &
equip them for the job market

• With the dramatic increase in participation rate, privatization of educational ventures through
entrepreneurship, & the government assigning the status of deemed university/autonomous
college, doubts arise regarding the standard/quality of education as well as the uniformity of
curricula/pedagogy across the country;

• Different types of institutions are having different objectives with interdisciplinary research,
teaching, service & financial gain

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• Diverse economic & academic situations in the institutions as well as among the student &
teaching community may further lead towards a sense of inequality & deprivation;

• In our country we don’t have uniform curricula, pedagogy, nor standardized evaluation
pattern for different degrees/levels of education (from K.G. to P.G);

• Scholars across the world have agreed that knowledge related to globalization involves both
people and things;

• As consumers, we tend to pay more attention to things, whether they are products or
services, instead of analyzing how these things are organized & by whom

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