Universities across the US have been struggling with state budget cuts, and many are being forced to cut programs and even entire disciplines. In California’s public universities, however, a certain class of programs is untouchable, and even thriving amidst the carnage.
According to Heather MacDonald, writing for City Journal California, the “diversity machine” has been immune to cuts, and is expanding in many cases:
Not only have diversity sinecures been protected from budget cuts, their numbers are actually growing. The University of California at San Diego, for example, is creating a new full-time “vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion.” This position would augment UC San Diego’s already massive diversity apparatus, which includes the Chancellor’s Diversity Office, the associate vice chancellor for faculty equity, the assistant vice chancellor for diversity, the faculty equity advisors, the graduate diversity coordinators, the staff diversity liaison, the undergraduate student diversity liaison, the graduate student diversity liaison, the chief diversity officer, the director of development for diversity initiatives, the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity, the Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues, the Committee on the Status of Women, the Campus Council on Climate, Culture and Inclusion, the Diversity Council, and the directors of the Cross-Cultural Center, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, and the Women’s Center.
In the meanwhile, other degree programs are going under the axe:
UC San Diego is adding diversity fat even as it snuffs out substantive academic programs. In March, the Academic Senate decided that the school would no longer offer a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering; it also eliminated a master’s program in comparative literature and courses in French, German, Spanish, and English literature. At the same time, the body mandated a new campus-wide diversity requirement for graduation. The cultivation of “a student’s understanding of her or his identity,” as the diversity requirement proposal put it, would focus on “African Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Hispanics, Chicanos, Latinos, Native Americans, or other groups” through the “framework” of “race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexuality, language, ability/disability, class or age.” Training computer scientists to compete with the growing technical prowess of China and India, apparently, can wait. More pressing is guaranteeing that students graduate from UCSD having fully explored their “identity.” Why study Cervantes, Voltaire, or Goethe when you can contemplate yourself? “Diversity,” it turns out, is simply a code word for narcissism.
And what is the real purpose of these programs?
The one observable activity performed by these lavishly funded diversity bureaucrats is to pressure academic departments to hire more women and minorities. (Even that activity is superfluous, given the abundant pressure for race and gender quotas already exerted by campus groups, every accrediting agency, and external political bodies.) Should a department fail to satisfy—as it inevitably will in every field with low minority participation—only one explanation is possible: a departmental or campus “climate” hostile to diversity, which then requires more intercessions from the diversity bureaucracy. The fact that every other college and university in the country is scouring the horizon for the identical elusive cache of qualified female and minority hires is not allowed into the discourse.
California tends to lead the nation in trends, and if its universities are any indication we are in for a period of substantial decline in higher education.
The author brings up the issue of sinecures. A sinecure is a position that provides easy income without any real responsibility, and has traditionally been used by politicians to provide patronage to supporters. It may be that California, which is evolving toward the Latin American model, is more susceptible to this than other parts of the country, but given our political climate and the degeneration of the American republic into a diverse hodgepodge of competing interest groups, it’s probably inevitable that the rest of the nation will follow to some degree.
Universities, like so many other institutions, are taking on the job of providing welfare rather than performing their putative function. One sees the same happening in government institutions across the land, from the military to county governments. This colossal waste saps the vitality of the private sector, feeding itself at the expense of the productive members of society.
Unfortunately, as long as there is anything left for the beast to consume it will grow and strengthen itself. I’m afraid there cannot be a good end to all this, because at this point it looks as though the only thing that could put a stop to it is bankruptcy.
