So You Want to Be a Shrink?

Navigating careers in psychology.

Laura Stephens is a doctoral student in psychology at the New School of Social Research. See full bio

March 17, 2009, Psych Careers

The End of Diversity?

Will the crisis homogenize the campus?

Are we looking at the death knell for diversity in graduate education? Graduate programs of all kinds have worked to become more diversified in their student and faculty populations. Yet considering the effect of the current economic collapse on the decision making processes regarding access to higher education, we may be looking at a very different landscape in academic populations in the future.

For years, institutions of higher learning have been severely criticized for their exclusivity and the resultant homogeneity. In order to deal with the fallout of public discourse about the lack of diversity on campuses, colleges and universities made some decisions regarding their admissions' strategies. Academic settings, especially elite ones, started expanding their recruitment directions in order to composition of their campuses to more accurately reflect the national multiplicity. Over the years, these efforts have helped to transform the complexion of university environments. These changes have brought fresh perspectives and voices that span the identities of class, ethnicities, gender, sexual orientation and nationalities into the scholastic discourse. Generous financial aid has played another important part in the assemblage of this more complex student body. However, we now may be facing a reversal of those very efforts.

Shortfalls at every level of governmental support for student financial aid, massive job loss as well as the strangle hold on the loan market are contributing to the limitation of fiscal options for education. The federal government has promised continued support of the college financial aid structure yet the collapse of other economic institutions may prove to be the undoing of other avenues for financing college costs. State and local governmental support, private, foundation or non-profit organization scholarships are beginning to disappear which adds to this financial morass. To supplement widening gaps, students have already been working two or more jobs. As the range of options continues to contract and family finances become more limited, students will find themselves having to make serious decisions as to whether or not college is still a possibility.

At this very moment, many students and their families are making the decisions as to which colleges are completely out of range or relatively feasible. Others are facing the reality that they will have to stop their college education mid-pursuit in order to help their struggling families. Still others are closing the door on the college dream for their children, some for right now and others forever. Once this myriad of decisions takes effect, colleges and universities are going to begin to see this alteration in the composition of their student bodies. While the economic crisis continues to deepen, those transformations will become more conspicuous. As the undergraduate population reflects these shifts, the pool of potential graduate students will begin to reflect this movement away from the complexity of student populations.

So what will we see in college classrooms of this country? Will the next generation of students, professors and college instructors be a slice of the elites? Will the discourse reflect only a very narrow viewpoint of the overall population? Who will be the new voices of literature, medicine, science, social sciences or the arts? And in the greater view of moving forward as a nation, can we truly afford this?