The Merit - Diversity Paradox in Doctoral Admissions: Examining Situated Judgment in Faculty Decision Making.

Abstract

The small base of extant research on doctoral admissions suggests a paradox between principles of merit and diversity: Faculty profess diversity, but rely on a conventional notion of merit that undermines diversity’s realization. To untangle this paradox and broaden understanding of graduate admissions, I conducted a comparative ethnographic case study focusing on the social construction of merit in Ph.D. admissions. Over two years of data collection in three research universities, I conducted 86 interviews with faculty and observed 22 hours of admissions committee meetings in ten highly ranked Ph.D. programs in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.

Guided by sociocultural theories of evaluation, decision making, and disciplines, I find that what counts as merit has an important organizational dimension that helps explain contradictions between espoused and enacted values. Merit is not just an individual attribute. It is also a significant organizational challenge that involves apparent contradictions because decision makers compromise across the multiple hierarchies of priorities for the discipline, department, committee, and self.

At the department level, a logic of status maintenance affects decision-making processes, perceptions of risk, meanings associated with common criteria, and profiles of preferred applicants. In debating borderline applicants, diversity is an important consideration, as are research engagement and “fit.” However, faculty make broad, initial cuts using a very high standard of conventional achievement that may undermine diversity. Furthermore, participants associate diversity more with obligation and pragmatic benefits than personal commitment or organizational transformation.

The decision-making model, which I call deliberative bureaucracy, maximizes efficiency and collegiality; however, it also reinforces reliance on GRE scores, obscures the basis for ratings and decisions, and sacrifices discussion of criteria and applicants in favor of discussing less-controversial matters of process. I also propose disciplinary logics as a mechanism explaining how disciplines affect faculty judgment, and explore four types of individual-level homophilic preferences that shape ratings and committee deliberations.

Findings have broad implications for access to graduate education. They indicate a need to change the organizational culture of gatekeeping so that principles of equity, quality, and diversity are aligned across the evaluative contexts in which judgments of merit are situated.