It is currently commonplace for institutions of higher education to proclaim to embrace diversity and inclusion. Though there are numerous rationales available for doing so, US Supreme Court decisions have consistently favored rationales which assert that diversity provides compelling educational benefits and is thus instrumentally useful. Our research is a quantitative/experimental effort to examine how such instrumental rationales comport with the preferences of White and Black Americans, specifically contrasting them with previously dominant moral rationales that embrace diversity as a matter of intrinsic values (e.g., justice). Furthermore, we investigate the prevalence of instrumental diversity rationales in the American higher education landscape and the degree to which they correspond with educational outcomes. Across six experiments, we showed that instrumental rationales correspond to the preferences of White (but not Black) Americans, and both parents and admissions staff expect Black students to fare worse at universities that endorse them. We coded university websites and surveyed admissions staff to determine that, nevertheless, instrumental diversity rationales are more prevalent than moral ones are and that they are indeed associated with increasing White–Black graduation disparities, particularly among universities with low levels of moral rationale use. These findings indicate that the most common rationale for supporting diversity in American higher education accords with the preferences of, and better relative outcomes for, White Americans over low-status racial minorities. The rationales behind universities’ embrace of diversity have nonlegal consequences that should be considered in institutional decision making.

目前，高等教育机构宣布拥抱多样性和包容性已经司空见惯。尽管这样做有很多理由，但美国最高法院的裁决一直支持这样的理由，即多样性提供了令人信服的教育好处，因此在工具上是有用的。我们的研究是定量/实验性的努力，以检查这些工具性理由如何与美国白人和黑人的偏好相符，特别是将它们与以前将多样性视为内在价值（例如正义）的主流道德理由进行对比。此外，我们调查了美国高等教育领域中工具多样性理论的普遍性以及它们与教育成果的对应程度。在六个实验中，我们表明，工具性理由与美国白人（但不是黑人）的偏好相对应，父母和招生人员都希望黑人学生在认可他们的大学中表现更差。我们对大学网站进行了编码并对招生人员进行了调查，以确定尽​​管如此，工具多样性理论比道德理论更普遍，并且它们确实与白人和黑人毕业差距的扩大有关，尤其是在道德理论使用水平较低的大学中。这些发现表明，支持美国高等教育多样性的最常见理由符合美国白人对低地位少数族裔的偏好和更好的相对结果。