BUSINESS SCHOOLS THAT want to design
fair and effective policies of equality,
diversity, and inclusion (EDI) must
begin with two crucial steps. First,
they need to articulate the groups that
fall outside the advantaged group, so
they can acknowledge the potential
for discrimination and take steps
to avoid it. And, second, they must
understand their specific goals in
creating EDI policies, whether to
support women in the #MeToo era,
promote greater innovation and productivity,
or simply reach out to talent
pools that have been overlooked so that
their communities can more closely
mirror the broader society.
However, diversity is highly contextual,
and diversity policies and objectives
vary greatly by nation. In Scandinavian
countries, gender diversity is a
priority. In India and Malaysia, policies
center around caste and ethnic origins.
In both Malaysia and South Africa, they
focus on the disadvantaged majority,
while in Nigeria, the emphasis is on tribal
diversity. In North America and Western
Europe, both gender and ethnicity
are at the heart of equity policies.
Because most business schools
recruit from around the globe, they need
policies designed for both in-country
“intra-national” groups and international
“cross-national” students. They
also must look at other distinctions: For
example, how does a wealthy international
student compare with a poor
national student of the same ethnicity?
Do wealthy students feel included in
that ethnicity, or does their wealth put
them in a different category?
At Coventry Business School, we have
tried to conduct a regression analysis
to look for relationships between the
variables that drive diversity within our
own teaching and learning structure, so
that we can design more targeted EDI
initiatives. But even schools that aren’t
able to carry out such an analysis can take
thoughtful and considerate steps toward
creating sensible policies and initiatives.
SETTING THE SCENE
Coventry University’s history goes back
to 1843, and over the decades, the school
has grown as a number of independent
institutions merged. Coventry University
proper was established in 1992 as a
wave of polytechnics in the United Kingdom
were rebranded as universities.
One of the goals of forming these 40 or
so new universities was to make higher
education accessible to approximately
50 percent of high school graduates.
In many ways, those universities
created post-1992 have greater diversity
than the long-established institutions,
which often are more homogeneous. But
the U.K. government has launched initiatives
designed to address racial inequities
across higher education. Soon all
universities will be required to account
for how they will improve outcomes for
underrepresented students, particularly
those that are black, Asian, or minority
ethnic (BAME).
In Coventry’s case, about 60 percent
of the university students are BAME,
compared to about 13 percent in the
general population. The proportion
is even higher at the business school,
although this figure is slightly skewed by
the presence of international students,
who make up nearly 40 percent of our
student population. The gender balance
of students at the university is 50/50,
and approximately 8 percent report a
disability. It’s especially pleasing that
close to half of all students are the first
in their families to attend university.
On the staff side, the numbers are
not as high. Nevertheless, at the university
level, 30 percent are BAME; the
percentage is 40 percent at the business
school, in part because 40 percent of
the staff comes from outside of the U.K.
About 5 percent of the university staff
reports a disability. The overall gender
balance favors women, though this ratio
is reversed at more senior management
levels, which are more likely, as one so
nicely says, to be “pale, stale, and male.”
We want diverse and engaged faculty and staff to serve as role models for minority students.
We make sure we monitor our percentages.
We also keep our policies up to date, find ways to recruit more diverse
students, and focus on retaining the ones
who have already enrolled. At the same
time, we make efforts to keep our faculty
and staff diverse and engaged, so they
can serve as role models for the minority
students who choose our school.
DEVELOPING THE EDI FRAMEWORK
To ensure that we continue to seek out
a diverse student and staff population,
the university reviews and updates its
Policy Statement of Commitment every
three years. The statement currently
affirms the university’s commitment
to promoting equality and refusing to
tolerate discrimination on the grounds
of “age, disability, ethnicity (including
race, colour, caste and nationality), gender
identity, marriage or civil partnership,
pregnancy or maternity, religion or
belief, sex and sexual orientation.”
The central university policy is
mirrored at the business school. At both
levels, there is an infrastructure of staff
and student networks aimed at various
groups, such as those with disabilities,
BAME individuals, LGBT+ individuals,
caregivers, and parents. These networks
are overseen by formal Equality and
Diversity Committees that are chaired
by the dean in the business school and
by the provost at the university level.
The policies are always subject to
revision. For instance, in 2016, we extended
the remit of the LGBT+ network
to create the Trans Equality Policy,
which allows transgender students to
change their names at the registry office,
take time off their studies for medical
reasons, have access to the toilets and
changing rooms of their chosen gender,
and retrofit graduation certificates
appropriately. These students also have
access to all the “dignity and respect” procedures outlined in a formal policy
designed to keep the institution free of
harassment or bullying.
In addition, the university acknowledges
equality and diversity efforts
through an awards celebration that is
now in its eighth year. The university
also observes celebration months,
particularly for the LBGT+, black, and
disabled communities. Coventry has
been recognized as a Stonewall Diversity
Champion by the nonprofit lobbying and
support group Stonewall, and we have
signed up to be a Disability Confident
Employer, a U.K. government designation
for companies that recruit and retain
people with disabilities and health
conditions. We are accredited by Athena
SWAN, which recognizes organizations
that support gender equality within
higher education.
FOCUSING ON STUDENT RECRUITMENT
Because of Coventry’s long legacy of inclusion,
potential students from diverse
backgrounds can see that the university
already has a wide range of students,
faculty, and alumni who can serve as role
models. In that sense, diversity becomes
something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Even so, Coventry continually pours
more effort into recruiting diverse
students. The university conducts extensive
outreach programs that target a
variety of communities near its location
in the U.K.’s Midlands and beyond. It
also oversees a body called the Better
Futures Multi-Academy Trust, which,
among other things, provides students
from certain secondary schools access
to the university.
Some of these students become
interested in the business school—but
they also become familiar with other
faculties of the university. In particular, they gain access to CU Coventry, a
wholly owned subsidiary of the university,
designed for students interested in
seeking professional qualifications or
pursuing undergraduate degrees on a
part-time basis. Students who complete
a foundation year of studies, designed to
get them up to “university speed,” may
also transfer to the business school.-
The CU pathway has proven to be
successful for nontraditional students,
such as those who have been in foster
care in their youth. Although this approach
is a small-scale project in terms
of student recruitment, it is an especially
satisfying one.
FOLLOWING STUDENT PROGRESSION
It is well and good to successfully attract
a diverse group of students, but it is
equally important to make sure that
students have a positive experience and
high graduation rates.
To this end, Coventry University
introduced a range of equality objectives
in 2012. There were multiple goals: to
ensure that all identifiable groups had
equally positive outcomes on National
Student Satisfaction surveys or staff
surveys, as appropriate; to increase the
diversity of staff at senior levels; and to
extend efforts for data collection, monitoring,
and analysis so we could better
identify significant gaps in service.
The school also wanted to increase
the positive progression of BAME students
through their studies so that they
ultimately would achieve grades and
graduation rates comparable to students
in other groups. While we have made
progress, we still see disparities. About
8 percent of white students, 10 percent
of Chinese students, 12 percent of South
Asian students, and 16 percent of black
students do not progress successfully
to the next year. At graduation, 33
percent of white students, 20 percent
of aggregated Asian students, and only
11 percent of black students achieve
“Firsts”—effectively graduating with the
highest grades.
Unpicking this is a challenge. We
monitor the U.K.’s National Student Satisfaction
survey data in great detail, and
we see that Coventry’s progression gaps
between white and BAME students are
mirrored by these groups at the national
level, particularly in their opinions
about teaching satisfaction, learning
opportunities, assessment and feedback,
academic support, the learning community,
and student voice. In terms of
course organization and management,
as well as learning resources, there are
no differences in satisfaction levels between
the different groups of Coventry
students. From a gender perspective of
satisfaction, there are also no differences
in the statistics. In both the national
survey and Coventry’s internal surveys,
students from the U.K. and non-E.U.
countries have about the same level of
satisfaction, while E.U. students are less
satisfied overall.
Even though Coventry’s statistics are
so similar to national averages, we would
like to see all students at our school exhibit
equally high levels of satisfaction.
Thus, this year we have launched a major
initiative to meet with students from
various communities to brainstorm
ideas and initiatives that can make them
more satisfied with their studies at Coventry
and improve their outcomes.
In the U.K.'s main stock market index, there are fewer women CEOs than CEOs named Dave.
We have found that inspiration
for change can come from somewhat
unexpected places. For instance,
business schools could learn valuable
lessons from the 2019 recipients of the
Nobel Prize for Economics—Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee, and Michael
Kremer—whose research explores
ways to better the lives of poor people
around the world. They conducted a
series of random control trials with
children in Kenya and India to discover
how to improve education outcomes for
students who were falling behind. They
found evidence that the performance
of these students improved when they
had access to additional after-school
tutoring and online revision, and when
they were grouped according to their
abilities. While these studies were
conducted with younger students, the
first two approaches certainly could be
implemented in higher education.
INCLUDING FACULTY AND STAFF
As much as we want our students to
feel welcome at Coventry University,
we want staff to feel an equal sense of
belonging. While we have a respectable
percentage of faculty and staff from
diverse backgrounds, at the more senior
levels of the university the balance is
no better than it is in industry—and the
numbers in industry are not encouraging.
A November 7, 2019, article in The
Economist noted that the share of female
executives in large U.S. and U.K. firms
went from 12 percent to only 14 percent
between 2015 and 2018. Amusingly and
sadly, in the U.K.’s main stock market
index, the FTSE, there are fewer women
CEOs than CEOs named Dave.
For other underrepresented groups,
the picture is no brighter. The same
article noted that the share of executives
who were ethnic minorities increased
from 12 percent to just 13 percent in the
same time period. Black men in the U.S.
fare particularly poorly. In 2017, only 3.4
percent of managers were black men—
about half of the percentage of black
men in the general population of the U.S.
At Coventry Business School, we are
taking deliberate steps to improve the
percentages of minorities in management
positions. The EDI Board—which
is chaired by the dean and includes a
mix of invited and self-selecting staff members—launched an unconscious
bias training program for senior staff
involved in recruitment, faculty management,
and promotion.
At the beginning, the board set an
agenda that involved bringing in speakers
who could discuss a wide range of
challenges related to gender and ethnicity,
as well as less visible disabilities such
as autism and dyslexia. But soon debates
became unproductive, and board members
struggled to find a way forward.
Then, university-level workshops and
a conference on communications and
staff belonging gave us the idea of adding
health and well-being to the issues we
addressed at the school level.
It made a huge difference. Staff were
engaged, animated, and ready to give
voice to a whole range of issues that had
a health and well-being focus. We started
to talk about disability, mental health,
racism, and equality as part of a wider
agenda that focuses on the solutions
rather than the problems. This approach
of creating an environment of inclusivity
for all has enriched our discussions
about EDI. We still don’t have all the
answers, but we’ve made a good a start.
ADOPTING RESOLUTIONS
Our diversity efforts continue to be
inspired by people from all over the
globe. At a recent conference in London,
one of the speakers was Baroness Ruby
McGregor Smith, the former CEO of the
MITIE Group, an outsourcer and energy
supply company with a staff of 54,000.
Smith is the only BAME female to lead
an FTSE 100 company. After sharing her
own story, she made a compelling case
for the moral and economic grounds for
taking action on diversity.
She also made five recommendations
that universities and business schools
could follow to increase inclusivity:
Publish data on gender and ethnicity,
and monitor progress. Pearson’s
law states that, “When performance
is measured, performance improves.
When performance is measured and
reported back, the rate of improvement
accelerates.”
Recognize those with potential.
Support talented individuals with
mentoring, coaching, career planning,
and personal development—effectively
providing a road map to the top.
Use purchasing power to effect
change. Make sure the school’s preferred
suppliers support EDI issues.
Look at recruitment practices. Do
universities use diverse panels as a way
to produce diverse shortlists of candidates?
How do they position job advertisements
to encourage interest from a
wide range of applicants?
Learn how to talk about gender,
race, and disability issues. Even as
we implement these approaches at
our university, we know there are no
easy solutions. So many factors affect
EDI. Wealth, power, and privilege are
concentrated with the few, and we must
work to extend advantages to the many.
It takes time and resources to create
a sense of equality, equity, and belonging
for all. But schools make time for what
they believe is important, and EDI is essential
to Coventry University’s mission
of creating access for a broad base of students.
Only by achieving this objective
will we be able to realize our long-term
mission “to create better futures”—for
everyone associated with the school.
Kai Peters is pro-vice-chancellor of the
Faculty of Business and Law at Coventry
University in the U.K. Heather McLaughlin
is academic dean of the university’s
Faculty of Business and Law, and Ian
Dunn is provost of Coventry University.
This article originally appeared in BizEd's March/April 2020 issue. Please send questions, comments, or letters to the editor to bized.editors@aacsb.edu.
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