The impact of hiring chief diversity officers on college student diversity.

Abstract

Diversity has become an increasingly important component of American education. In the past decade, many postsecondary educational institutions have established long-term goals to increase minority representation and inclusivity among both student bodies and faculty members by gender and major racial groups. To do so, many colleges and universities have hired executive-level diversity officers. I examine the effect of hiring such officers on the diversity of student populations on over 500 colleges and universities across the States. By using the differences-in-differences estimation and the Granger causality test, I am unable to find statistical evidence that the hiring of Chief Diversity Officers has strong positive effects on increasing student diversity.