Recruitment

[comrade_robinov]

Since my university is 58% female and has one of the highest Hispanic populations in the country, it's not surprising that other schools might be interested in recruiting our students. However, letting the statistics work in their favor is not enough: they specifically want to target minorities. I came across some distressing information

Comments

[rainswolf]

People are always coming down to my University to recruit "minority" students.

Personally I think it's fine to do some extra work to diversify your staff or student population. Education also becomes stagnant when everyone is from the same background. OFten students who are native to an area or state or who have a lot of family or cultural heritage there might not think of applying outside of the area the way a "white" person might. Schools or businesses try to work against that by coming here to recruit.

I think it's appropriate for the graduate school to have a meeting, and say something like "People of color encourage to attend" or somesuch, but a meeting just for a specific group might be offensive to all involved. (On the other hand, a meeting for, say, "women interested in engineering" isn't an offensive thought to me, so maybe it's not). Still, they'd probably be better served if they set up a booth at the graduate school job fair.

[comrade_robinov]

So, in other words, it's bad if they're recruiting severely underqualified students, but if they're encouraging well-qualified students (who otherwise wouldn't have thought to apply to graduate school or to a more prestigious school), it's okay.

I can get on board with that.

Then again, I stayed at UNM because I wanted to be with my family....
Then again, my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents went to UNM....

[rainswolf]

Yeah, family is a big reason I'm here too...