Paycheck Unfairness Under Cover of Diversity

The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) has just published an extensive research report on pay and representation of racial and ethnic minorities in higher education administrative positions that ought to be a bombshell, documenting as it does widespread pay discrimination on the basis of race. The devotion to “diversity” that pervades higher education, however, prevents the report’s authors as well as Inside Higher Ed, which published a long review of it, from seeing this discrimination for what it is.

“The good news for minority administrators,” the report states, is that “minority administrators as a whole are paid equitably in relation to their non-minority (White) colleagues. In other words, minority pay matches non-minority pay dollar for dollar. What’s more, this salary parity has remained fairly steady for the past 15 years.”

According to CUPA-HR director of research Jacqueline Bichsel “Higher education has been really progressive in maintaining that equal pay,” she told Inside Higher Ed. “We were pleasantly surprised to find that.” Since equal pay for university administrators has been constant for the past 15 years, I find it odd that the research director for the professional association of those administrators would be “surprised” (whether pleasantly or not) to find it, which suggests that she expected the administrators who hired those administrators to discriminate.

Actually, they do discriminate, although neither CUPA-HR nor Inside Higher Ed call it that. As noted above, the report found that minority administrators “as a whole” are paid equitably in relation to whites. But in two of the four regions of the country, the Midwest and Northeast, minority administrators are actually paid more. “It appears that in regions where there are fewer minorities in administrative positions,” the report concludes, “there may be a special effort to attract and retain them.” In the quaint and original language of the report, both of those regions “exceed pay equity” for minorities.

Another CUPA-HR report on pay gaps by gender, published last month, similarly found that, although in general women earned less than men in similar positions, “in positions where women are less represented, they tend to be paid more.” Often much more. Women chief facilities officers, for example, “earn 17% more than their male counterparts.” The report concludes that “this may indicate that …  higher ed institutions recognize the need to recruit and retain women in key leadership positions.”

Neither the CUPA-HR authors nor Inside Higher Ed recognize that paying some administrators more than equitably on the basis of race or sex means paying others less than equitably, i.e., discriminating against them.

Unfortunately, by now it is no longer surprising that devotees of “diversity” turn a blind eye to the racial discrimination necessary to produce it. That discrimination has been defended — successfully, so far — by the arguments that it is necessary and essential to provide a good education, i.e., that it is not, in Justice Powell’s often quoted words from Bakke, “[p]referring members of any one group for no reason other than race or ethnic origin” since that would be “discrimination for its own sake,” and that “the Constitution forbids.”

But why is it necessary or essential for university administrators to be “diverse”? Precisely how is any student’s education enhanced when a chief facilities officer is female or a vice president for finance is black? What, in short, justifies paying female and black administrators more simply because they are in fields or regions where they are “underrepresented”? There may well be few Muslim chief facilities officers. If so, is that a problem? If not, why not?

With regard to hiring administrators, diversiphiles have forgotten their own justifications for diversity, perhaps because they never really believed them. Certainly, Justice Powell’s admonition is nowhere to be found in Inside Higher Ed’s article, linked above.

“Look only at the trend line showing the slowly climbing percentage of higher education administrative positions held by minority leaders,” that article begins, “and it appears colleges and universities are inching toward a day when their leaders reflect the diversity of their student bodies.” It claims that appearance, however, is misleading because “a substantial representation gap exists between the percentage of minority administrators and the makeup of the country.

Further, the ethnic and racial makeup of administrators isn’t changing fast enough to keep up with broader demographic shifts — the line showing the percentage of minority higher education leaders is not growing closer to lines that show the country’s minority population or the percentage of minority college graduates.”

For CUPA-HR as well as Inside Higher Ed, “diversity” means nothing more than “equitable” representation. “Despite decades of diversity initiatives, ”its report states, “the gap in minority representation for leadership positions remains persistent.” Although it found pay equity — and, as we have seen, minority pay that was more than equitable— it remained deeply troubled by “the large and growing gap between the U.S. minority and higher education administrator populations.”

As applied throughout higher education and articulated explicitly here, the emphasis on terms like underrepresentation and representation gap and reflect reveal that “diversity” means preferring blacks, ethnic minorities, and occasionally women for no reason other than race, ethnicity, or sex.