EDUCATING THE WORKFORCE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: A Cross-Disciplinary Analysis of the Impact of the Undergraduate Experience on Students’ Development of a Pluralistic Orientation

This study extends the extant research demonstrating the educational benefits of diversity and examines how undergraduate students across disciplinary contexts acquire a set of pluralistic skills and dispositions necessary for today’s diverse workforce and society. The sample consisted of 4697 students who participated in a longitudinal study in the Fall of 2000 and Spring of 2002 at nine different public institutions. Findings from the study emphasize the importance of structural diversity in promoting positive interactions across race, which in turn produce positive indirect effects on students’ intergroup learning and second-year pluralistic orientation. The study also demonstrates the varying ways in which students in different majors acquire pluralistic skills, especially students in the engineering and life sciences. The study concludes with implications for practice and policy in the wake of the affirmative action case at the University of Michigan. This paper was originally presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, November 4–6, 2004, Kansas City, MO.