Contextualizing Diversity at Princeton

Undergraduate students at Princeton represent a range of diverse backgrounds. Half of the students in the class of 2024 are women and 61% of domestic students (citizens and permanent residents) identify as people of color. Sixty-three percent of students enter Princeton from public schools and 20% come from low-income families. While 10% of students in the class of 2024 are children of alumni, 17% of the class are first-generation college students, according to the Princeton University Office of Admission.

For the 2023-2024 academic year, the total annual cost of attendance at Princeton University was $83,140 (Tuition, $59,710; Residential college fee, $11,400; Food, $7,980; Estimated miscellaneous expenses, $4,050). To accommodate our diverse student body, Princeton provides financial aid to 60% of their students with the average grant exceeding the cost of tuition. A full 82% of recent seniors graduated debt free. Further, the average debt of graduating seniors in 2023 was $9,000 (compared to $32,300 nationally for students attending private four-year colleges). Twenty-two percent of students in the class of 2025 are eligible for Federal Pell Grants, need-based grants to low-income students. Given the diversity of the Princeton student body, it is important to develop and use strategies that make all students, regardless of their background, feel welcome and fully able to learn.

 

Disability Inclusion

Disability Inclusion

Disability access and inclusion on college campuses is required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as amended by the Federal Rehabilitation Act, Section 504. Princeton also complies with the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination. In accordance with these laws, students at Princeton “may request academic accommodations; housing and dining accommodations; modifications to University policies, rules, and regulations; environmental adjustments such as the removal of architectural, communication, or transportation barriers; and auxiliary aids and services” (Office of Disability Services). The term “disability” may refer to “learning, physical, sensory, psychological, medical, and certain temporary disabilities” (Inclusive Princeton).

While Princeton’s Office for Disability Services (ODS) is charged with removing barriers to education caused by specific impairments, creating an inclusive environment, both physical and virtual, for students with disabilities also requires us to consider how disability is “a valuable form of human variation,” much like gender and race, with special “cultural diversity, situated knowledge, and a basis for relational ethics” that can shape the university campus more broadly (Hamraie 260).

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Racial and Ethnic Identity

Racial and Ethnic Identity

In response to the recent reckoning with racial injustice, President Eisgruber has called on us to confront racism and to bring our “scholarly and teaching resources to bear to create a more just and equal society,” encouraging us “to ask how we can more effectively fight racism—through our teaching and research, through our operations, and through our interactions and partnerships with those around us.” The work of confronting structural racism is broad in scope and includes renaming buildings, recognizing and confronting bias in hiring practices, offering resources for community building, fostering dialogue across the institution, and having a wide diversity of students on campus. Creating anti-racist classrooms is integral to this work and is essential for ensuring that all students in our community can learn effectively.

Structural racism is often described as behaviors and assumptions that seem normal, even as the very air we breathe,"or as a “banality” and so possibly difficult at first to recognize or identify. Indeed, there is a complex and long history of racial exclusion in American higher education but we can actively counteract this history by fostering inclusive teaching practices in our classrooms. 

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Gender and Sexual Identity

Gender and Sexual Identity

Although a few women at Princeton served as instructors and researchers, and enrolled as students in limited capacities, the first full class of undergraduate women was not admitted until 1969 (the Class of 1973), following a vote by the Board of Trustees to promote a "better balance of social and intellectual life" by admitting women. Princeton first reached “gender parity” in the student body in 2004 (A brief history of women at Princeton, A brief history of admissions).

Gender activists have long argued for the difference between sex and gender, and this distinction continues to be crucial as we acknowledge nonbinary gender identities: one’s gender identity may or may not be different from one’s sex assignment at birth, and likely influences one’s gender expression. Sexual identity (meaning attraction or lack of attraction to romantic partners) is different from gender identity (how one identifies with one gender or another). For further clarification and definitions see Princeton’s Gender and Sexuality Resource Center’s Gender & Sexuality Educational Materials, such as “Understanding Gender,” “What is Gender?”, and  “The Language of Gender.

Important acronyms include: transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) students, LGBT and LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer)--scholars and activists encourage educators to recognize the differences and distinctions in identities, and the serious risks that TGNC students face (especially those who are students of color). 

 

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Income Inequality

Income Inequality

As Princeton and other universities expand their efforts to diversify their student bodies, they have turned their focus to first-generation college students and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Resulting in large part from changes made in 1998 to financial aid policies, Princeton has seen a significant increase in the number of students from low income families: “Although less than half of undergraduates were on financial aid throughout the 20th century, nearly two thirds of them were by 2010.” To increase the diversity of their campuses, universities must make themselves accessible to students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Yet the legacy of wealth at institutions of higher education doesn’t disappear when these students come to campus. In their book, Paying for the Party, Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton argue that “students from similar class backgrounds share financial, cultural, and social resources, as well as lived experiences, that shape their orientations to college and the agendas they can readily pursue” (10). For low income students on college campuses, the financial, cultural, and social orientations that shape the college experience are often so different from their own, that they experience “culture shock,” a lack of ownership over the college experience, and what Anthony Jack in calls Assimilation Blues, a “feeling of alienation that poor people feel in places that are supposed to provide a way out of poverty” (53).

Creating inclusive cultures for economically disadvantaged students on college campuses requires widespread cultural shifts and additional institutional support, and Princeton has taken significant steps to ease the transition to Princeton for low income and first generation students. In 2015, Princeton created the Scholars Institute Fellows Program to support first generation and low income students at Princeton. The program runs an intensive summer program for incoming freshmen (the Freshman Scholars Institute) that introduces students to campus resources, creates robust communities and social supports, and introduces key skills in advance of the school year in addition to providing ongoing support. In addition to these institutional programs, there are several things faculty can do to decrease the barriers low income students experience in the classroom. 

In his book, The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges are Failing Disadvantaged Students, Anthony Jack gives several suggestions of things to keep in mind when striving to create an inclusive environment for low income students. He suggests that faculty introduce students to the resources on campus and encourage them to take advantage of these opportunities. College is not a “golden ticket” out of poverty, and making the most out of the experience is essential. “Too often we think about those youth who make it out of distressed communities and into college–especially elite colleges–as having already won” (189). However, it is critical to remember that leaving poverty can be an emotionally taxing experience for students. Being admitted to an elite college does not mean that students can or will take advantage of all the resources they have access to on campus. Jack also reminds faculty of the importance of encouraging students' feeling of belonging since feelings of exclusion may extend beyond the college setting. “If students believe that the college recruited them, promised them an academically challenging yet socially enriching experience, and then intentionally made them feel like outsiders when they arrived,” they may opt out of the very professions and post-graduate opportunities that can facilitate their upward mobility (192). Creating inclusive environments in the classroom can go a long way to communicate to low income students that elite opportunities are indeed for people “like them.” 

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