Dispersing Diversity at the California Community College: From Frameworks to Diffusion

Abstract

Most contemporary scholarship on the purpose of diversity discourse and diversity experience in higher education is focused on the American university. A variety of studies on the topic offer insight into the ways diversity is measured on university campuses, the motives for diversity discourse on university campuses, the outcomes associated with university diversity discourse, and university students' experiences of diversity discourse. One would be hard pressed, however, to locate scholarship that offers insight into how diversity discourse and diversity experience play out on community college campuses. In order to help fill the research gap, this study examines the purpose diversity discourse and students' diversity experience across three California community colleges (CCC). The results of this study indicate that the purpose of CCC diversity discourse is to foster positive educational environments that support and represent diversity groups through campus programs in order to increase proportional student output. It is not to enhance the cognitive, intellectual, and emotional development of active learners through diverse interaction. At the CCC today, diversity experience fails to invoke active engagement; it signifies passive, impersonal seeing and hearing.