Giving Compass' Take:

• Margee Ensign explains how and why Dickinson College is creating an institution to cultivate a truly diverse higher education experience for their students. 

• How can philanthropy support diversity at colleges? What are the broader implications of achieving diversity? 

• Find out how diversity can fill the tech talent gap. 

More than one million international students came to the U.S. for higher education during the 2016-17 academic year, marking the 11th consecutive year that the number of international students in the U.S. grew. Additionally, students of color now make up about 40 percent of our student bodies, and we seek greater geographic and economic diversity as well.

While we say we seek and welcome diversity, most institutions have not created truly inclusive campuses — campuses that embrace and understand the students we work so hard to attract. While our classrooms may look different than they did 20 years ago, we paper over difference in order to avoid discomfort. It doesn’t work.

Critics of higher education call for more emphasis on career preparation, skill development and job placement. In such an environment, I have been told, greater intercultural competence might be nice to have, but it is just an elitist frill.

I couldn’t disagree more.

Today’s students will be competing in a global marketplace, living in diverse communities and working on diverse teams.

An essential part of any career preparation must involve teaching students the skills to understand issues and view situations from different perspectives. They must learn to recognize their own often-unconscious assumptions.

At Dickinson, we have undertaken a somewhat unusual approach. We are building a campus-wide institutional structure that incorporates diversity and inclusion work with intercultural competence and ethical reasoning.

Read the full article about cultivating diversity in higher education by Margee Ensign at The Hechinger Report.