So, if these DEI staff will even help out white kids, where does the "diversity and inclusion" aspect of their jobs come into play?
Glad you asked. You can ask them as well, you know. Approach with a friendly and sincere question - avoid the accusatory “are you useless” tone that presumes you know more than you do, and just ask them humbly to explain what they know and you don’t….
It comes into play by training these staff members to know what the specific barriers different kinds of student will face. In the past, it was one-size fits all, and the things they did helped some students but not others. Now they have background and training to understand the specific needs of students coming from different backgrounds, and how to help them navigate what they actually need instead of only what white men need.
Some of the training is incredibly valuable for white men who are not typical white men. If you’re not “type A” these navigators can help you recognize that and create compensations for you to use to overcome your particular weaknesses And still get the interview and succeed at it.
And does it take a multi-6 figure salary to help someone write a resume, select classes, find internships, etc?
Here you have again reduced their contributions to a single paragraph, without understanding the whole. You name it like they are an individual contributor, when this person was a director, and manages teams. A common mistake to confuse entry level or ground level employees with those who are paid to set strategies and create long-term plans and manage the performance of others.
Moreover, I expect that the people with this training are not widely found, yet, and so they can command a higher salary. Your disdain of DEI training, ironically, makes the current DEI professionals more rare and more highly compensated.
Once we can get more people to understand and embrace the value of DEI, we won’t need specialists. But at the moment, the need that the students have for this service is not met by your run-of-the-mill advisors. Ironic, that your disdain for the need is what drives the price of it, yes?
Ultimately, no, the advisor level person would not be worth 300K. Even the director may not be that high when they are easy to find and the rest of the staff is better trained. But that is not first on my list for very obvious reasons - there are far bigger problems with a better immediate impact on student cost.
I could see paying some $50k per year tops for that, but to pay them more than a physician? Or CEO of a small company? Makes no sense.
Market pressures, my libertarian friend. Market pressures. Let’s make DEI mainstream, so that all college students have access, and the cost of it will go down. You’ll note that was on my list of things to attack, but it was not in the top two.
I would note, it’s not really even my #3, because I would go after athletic administrators first.
Is it safe to assume that you are OK with the status quo of university DEI employees and salaries, say as presented in the UoM chart?
No, it is not safe to assume that you know the nuances of my opinion. I don’t operate in Duplo-Blocks version of policy. I can think in nuances.
I said:
1. Attack deficiencies of Trade School access
2. Eliminate student loan interest or replace with fed rate
3. Look at University salary structure - and I’ll add some nuance
…3.1 Examine athletic departments and recall the mission of the school
…3.2 Examine administrators
…3.3 Examine instructional staff and
increase salary for full time instructors and ensure the school is not pushing people into adjunct positions against their will, paying them less and losing good instructors
.….3.4 Perform better DEI training for all staff so that distinct positions are not needed just to fill deficiencies.