OUR VIEW: Top professors teach well to all ethnicities
An ongoing study by the National Bureau of Economic Research reports that minority students tend to perform better academically when their instructors are of the same ethnicity. So, logically it might follow that in order to accommodate USU’s wide range of minority students, departments should hire minority professors proportionate the number of minority students in that field. For example, if 5 percent of students are Hispanic, 5 percent of instructors should be, too; if 2 percent of students are Asian, 2 percent of instructors should be, and so on. That model, however, seems a bit too simplistic to us.
We like what Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Director David Ottley said — when USU hires an instructor, his or her qualification for the job is the deciding factor, not race or gender.
The NBER study seems to suggest that the most important factor in student-teacher relations is ethnicity. We understand the claim. Aside from the statistics, which are hard to argue with, it’s common sense that someone with the same background, values, mindset and perceptual lens should be able to connect better than someone without them. Our question is this: Does a professor need to share a student’s ethnicity in order to share those same characteristics?
Our belief is the phenomenon of minority students doing better academically under minority professors is largely psychological. That is to say, taking a class from someone who shares traditions and characteristics is comforting to us and helps us open up, but it doesn’t really affect pedagogy.
The majority of The Statesman editorial staff is white. So are the majority of our professors. And still, we find ourselves constantly complaining about certain white professors and also constantly praising other white professors. Many of us also enjoy and even connect with our minority professors. In fact, some of our favorite professors are not from our home countries or ethnic backgrounds. What we do share with those professors is a passion for the subjects we’re studying, common professional goals, a shared interest in our success and of course mutual respect. In cases like these, we see that ethnicity is not a deterrent to compatibility. If anything, the diversity is an opportunity for both of us to grow and gain perspective.
And so our argument is this: while sharing an ethnic background with students provides obvious advantages, a truly qualified professor can transcend cultures. The best professors, arguably, are those who have learned to teach anyone, and who have themselves overcome cultural obstacles — perhaps even overcoming their own culture.
The real challenge, then, is to learn to connect to anyone. Yes, language barriers are troublesome, and yes, someone who shares your religion and values may be easier to identify with, but in college we’re preparing for the real world, and the real world is going to be choc full of people different from us. Crossing paths with a professor of a different background from you is an opportunity to gain two educations: one on the curriculum at hand, and one on learning to deal with diversity.