Students at the Margins - Day Two - The Diversity of Diversity

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Oct 12, 2014
by Louise Hallman
Students at the Margins - Day Two - The Diversity of Diversity

Minorities might be disadvantaged but not all disadvantaged students are minorities

Who are marginalized students?

In many countries, minorities are disadvantaged but not all disadvantaged students belong to a minority; there is a diversity of diversities and a multitude of marginalized communities.

In South Africa, which had followed and has sinced moved away a system similar to the US minority serving institution (MSI) model (see left), Black/African students make up the majority of students, yet they remain marginalized both in access to higher education (despite de jure equal access) and once they arrive on campus. Simply encouraging cross-campus social events isn’t enough; Black students’ realities and expectations of the college experience can be vastly different from their White classmates, especially those fortunate enough to come from a long family legacy college attendance. Many Black students attend college on scholarships and must work much harder than their White classmates to stay in school. Equal access has not led to equal attainment with Whites still graduating at a much higher rate than their Black peers.

Marginalization also remains a problem for  even the Black/non-White faculty on the campuses of some South African universities, showing that it is the institutions as much as the students that need to change.

MSIs in the US are defined along race and ethnic lines, and in many countries affirmative action policies take a similar approach. However, many more students are marginalized for more than just their race; gender, sexuality, and language can also play a part in marginalization. 

Enforced language assimiliation can ensure access to higher education for minority groups (such as the Roma in Hungary, see next page), however students can lose their ability to communicate at an academic/high level in their mother tongue when attending a university in another/majority language. But it is not as simple as colleges enabling their students to submit their work in their native language; higher education institutions need to also have faculty fluent enough to assess the work. 

In China, marginalization can be four fold: gender and ethnicity play a role, but urbanization and geography are the factors of greatest disparity.

Some ethnic minorities are now outperforming the Han majority in higher education, especially those concentrated in urban areas and which have adopted Mandarin over their traditional dialects. However in the more remote areas of the country, this is not the case.  

In the urban centers of the East, girls outperform boys at all levels of education and outnumber their male counterparts in higher education. But in the rural West, the picture is vastly different, with fewer girls attending primary education and rarely reaching higher education. And both girls and boys in the West are disadvantaged in comparison to their Eastern peers; they often have lower levels of Mandarin Chinese, English and IT skills. 

China’s growing higher education system needs to tackle this disparity.

In Israel, in addition to that of how to address the education of its Arab-Israeli minority (especially with regards to the language of instruction and assessment; Hebrew, the language of the state versus Arabic, the native language of Arab-Israelis), challenges also exist in the recent integration of the growing minority of Ultra Orthodox Jews into the higher education system. 

Traditionally this sector of society had been exempt from all state education, military service and the labor market. Following protests, Ultra Orthodox Jews are now attending institutions such as Hebrew University in Jerusalem. But their long self-exclusion from state schooling in favor of religious education has left this growing sector of Israeli society woefully unprepared for higher education. Hebrew University resisted calls for a separate campus for the students, but offers a separate preparatory course catering to their needs.

Across the globe, poverty remains the biggest barrier to education access and success, regardless of other forms of marginalization.

As one Fellow recounted, one of her students said: “I make sure my clothes are always clean so [other students and faculty] won’t know I’m poor.” Another asked, “Is it possible to make students reared in poverty comfortable at wealthy colleges?  Do they ever really feel at home?”


The session "Students at the Margins and the Institutions that Serve Them: A Global Perspective" is being conducted in partnership with Educational Testing Service and Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions. You can follow all discussions on Twitter with the hashtag #SalzburgMSI and read all our coverage on the session page: www.salzburgglobal.org/go/537