Using the Numbers

One obvious metric for assessing the success of diversity efforts is numerical—for example, measuring actual experience in recruiting more students from diverse backgrounds into an MBA program. Whether percentages of diverse students are rising offers a tangible way to evaluate improvement.

• Embed appropriate metrics in your strategy. When you write your strategic plan for diversity, be sure to delineate what success would look like for each goal. Those benchmarks give you a framework for measuring progress.
• Benchmark against national data and other relevant measures. One way to assess your own experience is to compare your numbers to national data. Enrollment numbers, for example, can of course vary from year to year. To create a frame of reference for analyzing your numbers, compare your institution’s experience for a given year to the number of diverse test takers that GMAC reports for the same time span.

Measuring Success Beyond the Numbers

Beyond the numbers, diversity can be a bit amorphous to pin down, but there are other meaningful ways to assess progress. Don’t let your efforts become so focused on numerical improvements that you lose sight of other important gains, such as changes in institutional culture.

• Surveys. Questions that speak to diversity can be written into surveys that measure staff and student satisfaction. For example, if your diversity vision includes a principle that everyone in the school feel respected, supported and valued you can ask staff to judge that question—among many others—in an annual questionnaire. Answers can inform improvements in the school’s diversity strategy.
• Talking the talk. Part of your diversity strategy may include a communications component—perhaps an expectation that top leaders should regularly speak to the importance of diversity. Against specific goals for a given year, for example, you can measure how often your dean or other administrators speaks publicly on diversity themes.
• Count diversity discussions. Tally how often your school or institution offers workshops, seminars, presentations, dialogues, and other campus meetings on diversity themes. Assess those numbers—and the effects of the conversations—to determine if more such discussions are needed.
• Document changes in curriculum. An important measure of diversity’s impact on a program, school, or institution is how often and how well diversity is embedded in the curriculum. Especially if one of your goals is to work with faculty to help make diversity a focal point in the classroom, track syllabi to document additions of diversity.
• Use focus groups. To measure the softer side of diversity and acquire some anecdotal data—such as how students feel about their environment, you can conduct student focus groups. Those conversations can prove effective in helping you to understand how students feel, how well your initiatives foster diversity, and—most importantly—where and how things may need to improve.
• Assess the cultural climate. Every institution has its own culture. To help advance diversity, you need to assess how well your institution’s climate supports, nurtures and celebrates the differences that create a diverse culture. Such factors are often hard to specify. It’s up to you to find ways to dig below the surface to determine how well your campus culture supports diversity—and where it might need work. Focus groups can also provide invaluable insight for assessing campus climate.

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