Today’s higher education leaders must advocate for providing all students access to higher education and maximizing the educational benefits of diversity in the classroom. The ADC has created a toolkit for access and diversity advocates. Higher education leaders seeking to increase access and diversity at their institutions can use this toolkit to facilitate meaningful discussion with stakeholders about relevant student-related policies, including:
- Enrollment-related policies (such as in admission, financial aid, and recruitment);
- Student affairs policies, programs, and strategies; and
- Academic policies, programs, and strategies.
The Access and Diversity Toolkit—available through the menu at left—is the product of significant research, including extensive outreach within the higher education community. Institutional leaders and policymakers have asked for resources that can promote common understandings of the key issues in order to advocate for the development of coherent, evidence-based, and consequential access and diversity policies. This toolkit will help facilitate constructive dialogues that will lead to policies and programs that are both educationally sound and legally sustainable.
Using the Toolkit
This toolkit provides some of the most relevant information in an easy-to-use format with extensive lists of additional resources — research, policy, and legal — to guide conversations about access and diversity. Each tool in the toolkit is easy to duplicate, should users choose to share them with their colleagues.
The tools in this toolkit are organized to address the following areas with respect to each of the issues framed by the tools:
- The Issue: A brief discussion of the issue(s) of relevance that directly face higher education institutions as they contemplate future action
- The Policy Context: A brief description of the relevant legal and education policy landscapes that bear on the issue(s).
- Key Action Steps: Recommended steps for effectively evaluating key information and establishing institutional policy directions.
- Selected Resources: A non-exhaustive list of leading references that will advance institutional awareness and understanding regarding the relevant issue(s).
The number of tools in this toolkit may grow over time, based on the expressed needs of College Board members and constituents. In addition, as events warrant, the tools included in the toolkit will be updated.