The news aggregator msn.com has a Washington Examiner story dealing with the near-universal university obsession with DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion). It highlights the success FL Govl. Ron DeSantis has had in beginning to dismantle the expensive DEI/critical race theory bureaucracies so common in academia.
The author believes the ideological commitment of university folk to DEI is not strong and he cites some evidence to that effect. Perhaps he is correct; I believe there are two other factors to consider.
First, I believe the author underrates the extent to which DEI efforts are an attempt to keep enrollments and particularly graduations up, the doors open, and state funding flowing. White and Asian kids from the middle and upper middle classes are the cohort of young people who traditionally sustained graduation levels, and kept enrollments growing.
Birth rates for these groups have been in free fall for decades. To some degree, DEI efforts are directed at trying to "manage" the replacement of the traditional students with BIPOC kids who traditionally have not had high graduation rates.
Nobody wants to shrink the campus footprint, fire faculty, etc. To keep faculty and administrators employed, it is crucial to sustain graduation levels with whatever students are available and therefore retain public support.
Second, DEI hiring at universities has been a sort of WPA project to create government jobs for the otherwise nearly unemployable graduates of Black Studies, Latinx Studies, Women's Studies and LGBTQ+ Studies programs.
