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When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the University of Michigan in the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, contributors to campus diversity efforts viewed this as an affirmation of their ongoing work. A majority of the Court upheld the constitutionality of race-sensitive admissions practices, concluding in part that student body diversity promotes favorable learning outcomes and better prepares students for life after college. Although the evidence supporting the benefits of being educated among a more racially diverse undergraduate student body is mounting, it is a relatively new area of educational research. This entry overviews the educational benefits hypothesis and the research that either supports or refutes this hypothesis.

Background

Before Grutter and its companion case, Grutter v. Gratz, the Supreme Court's 1978 ruling in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke stood as the seminal affirmative action decision in higher education. In that case, Allan Bakke, a White male, brought suit against the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine, alleging that his constitutional rights had been violated when he was not offered admission to the school, whereas “less qualified” minority applicants were admitted. One opinion heavily guided the ruling of that case when it eventually appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court. In his opinion, Justice Lewis Powell argued that the attainment of a diverse student body broadens the range of viewpoints collectively held by those students and subsequently allows an institution to provide an atmosphere that is “conducive to speculation, experiment and creation—so essential to the quality of higher education.” This type of atmosphere, Powell claimed, enhances the training of the student body and better equips the institution's graduates for civic engagement. In speaking about diversity in a student body, he stressed a commitment to public issues. He found the connection between diversity and public issues particularly critical to the training of physicians, lawyers, and other civic leaders because these students not only are members of a diverse society but also will serve in such an environment. Thus, Powell believed that if students were to be successful in fulfilling their professional and civic responsibilities, their educational experiences and interactions should reflect that diversity.

Of the six Supreme Court opinions in Bakke, only Powell's advanced an educational justification for race-conscious admissions practices, a rationale uncontested by his fellow justices. Subsequently, Powell's rationale set a legal precedent for upholding such practices in higher education, and his opinion has gained widespread support among educators. In the 2003 decision on Grutter, which also challenged race-conscious admissions practices, the Court endorsed Powell's rationale. Unlike Powell's opinion, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's majority opinion in Grutter highlighted the Court's acceptance of and reliance on social science research, noting that the numerous studies and reports entered into evidence at trial show that “student body diversity promotes learning outcomes, and better prepares students for an increasingly diverse workforce and society, and better prepares them as professionals”.

Research Concerning Diversity

Alongside the legal controversy regarding race-conscious admissions practices, a robust body of research has emerged that has contributed to understanding the potential educational impact of racial-ethnic diversity in colleges and universities. Most of this empirical work has focused on three distinct forms of racial diversity: structural diversity (student body racial composition), curricular/cocurricular diversity (programmatic efforts that expose students to content about race/ethnicity), and interaction diversity (informal student–student cross-racial contact).

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