A survey of students, faculty and administrators has now made it possible, even in The New York Times, to make the obvious point that “diversity” in higher education lowers standards and satisfaction for just about everybody. Even the administrators who defend diversity programs so loudly don’t like them much—47.7 percent oppose them, and of those willing to admit they have an effect on academic standards 15 out of 16 believe the effect is negative.
The problem with “diversity” is not simply that less qualified people have to be let in, looked after, and advanced. Even if qualifications were equal in the abstract, people with less in common find it harder to work together toward complex common goals. At one time people at Yale had some idea what a Yale man was. The idea might have been good, bad or somewhere in between, but it helped orient the institution to something something with more human content than prestige, grants, careers, and PC. That idea has been lost, and with it the notion of an education with a value not solely measurable by money and position.