Promoting Equity through Institutional Accountability in Higher Education

According to Lewin’s theory of change, iterative improvements of a group, system or institution are greatly facilitated by clearly evaluating the state of the system to assess when change occurs (or not) and inform the diagnosis. Within the field of applied psychology, there is strong evidence that feedback promotes changes in behavior and can increase motivation for attainment of goals because it creates accountability (Kluger& DeNisi, 1996). Consistent with this orientation, the Joint Working Group strongly recommends that decreasing URM and gender disparity begins with institutional accountability. Currently, there is no requirement for higher education institutions at the undergraduate level to know the ethnic identities of the students

To establish institutional benchmarks and encourage greater progress, institutional-level tracking by program of student ethnicity and performance outcomes must begin to occur in a uniform manner, such that comparisons can be made across time, departments and institutions. What is now opaque can be made visible by systematically tracking the number of degree candidates and earners in STEM disciplines across demographic categories and making those numbers publicly available on institutional websites. In so doing, we (a) enable researchers and practitioners to identify institutions that are making progress (or not) and (b) allow for more careful data-driven analysis of what constitutes effective practices that can be adapted. Federal and private funding agencies should require this information from institutions that receive support in a standardized format that identifies disparity and equity. In addition, annual reports of institutional STEM data could be included in accreditation reviews. Most importantly, colleges and universities themselves stand to benefit from better institutional data on student performance (Hurtado et al., 2009;

These data would considerably enhance educators’ and researchers’ ability to identify the characteristics of institutions with programs successful at recruiting and retaining URMs. Institutional data would complement current social science findings that show how empowering URMs with the skills, scientific identity, and values of scientists results in students experiencing greater integration into the scientific community and increases the likelihood of their persistence (Estrada et al., 2011; Hurtado,