(Photo by iStock/PeopleImages)
When students from underrepresented groups apply for educational scholarships, they face a choice between awards that are unrestricted and awards dedicated to supporting their specific demographic group. Universities and foundations fund the latter to attract more minorities and students from low-income or disadvantaged backgrounds, with the further aim of helping the university recruit a more diverse student body.
The problem is that when diversity awards are available, minority applicants may be more likely to choose to apply into that pool, even if higher-dollar awards are available as unrestricted scholarships. Applicants may opt themselves out of the running for more scholarship money, perhaps because they feel they have a stronger chance of winning a diversity award, a team of University of Washington researchers have found.
“Diversity awards may lead applicants from marginalized groups to be less likely to apply for unrestricted awards, leaving those applicant pools considerably whiter and more male,” the researchers write.
Three psychology students—Adriana Germano, Sianna Ziegler, and Laura Banham—and psychology professor Sapna Cheryan conducted the research. Their study consisted of four experiments, one looking at awards for racial minorities and the other three focusing on women’s scholarships. For the first experiment, the researchers used a sample of people from groups underrepresented among university students, mainly self-identified as Black, Latino, and Native American. Through a series of questions, the participants revealed whether they were more likely to apply for a larger, unrestricted award or a smaller award, which was either only for minority applicants or open to everyone.
The researchers found that although participants preferred to apply for scholarships that awarded more money, they were significantly less likely to apply for the better-paying unrestricted award when the smaller scholarship was presented as a diversity award. “Participants felt increased fit with and a greater chance of winning the diversity award than the unrestricted award,” they write. The same results held when the participants were only women and were considering applying for either an unrestricted scholarship or an award open only to women applicants.
The final experiment tested these findings under real-world circumstances. Women students were invited to submit essays for a scholarship competition either open to all students or only for women, with a monetary award given out to the winners. Here again, the results replicated those of the hypothetical scenarios: “Even with real money at stake and completing real award applications, when a diversity award was offered, women were more likely to prioritize and complete applications for diversity awards than for larger unrestricted awards.”
The study tested a variety of reasons why applicants would be more likely to choose diversity scholarship competitions than those open to everyone, but the best predictor was fit, “the perception that the diversity award is a good match for someone like them.” That finding held firm even when a number of other conditions were accounted for.
The researchers became interested in this question after hearing colleagues discuss how they themselves had applied for diversity awards rather than unrestricted scholarships, Germano says. She attained her PhD at the University of Washington in 2021 and is now a postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia Business School. “We were curious whether other applicants from marginalized groups would also make the same choice, and if so, why?” she says.
While diversity awards are clearly accomplishing their goal of encouraging applicants from marginalized groups to seek funding for higher education, the interplay between these scholarships and open-access scholarships has an impact, Germano says.
“When applicants from marginalized groups are more likely to apply for diversity over unrestricted awards, it skews the applicant pool for unrestricted awards towards male and white applicants,” she says.
In interpreting the results, Germano says, it’s important not to assume that applicants from underrepresented groups are “making the wrong choice” when they choose to apply for diversity awards first. Instead, it would be more useful to think about ways to solve this problem without placing the burden on the applicants. Some ideas the researchers propose include “creating automatic entry into both unrestricted and diversity award pools and making unrestricted awards more explicitly value applicants’ diverse experiences.”
“This paper compellingly illustrates how important it is to study the consequences of well-intentioned diversity initiatives,” says Aneeta Rattan, associate professor of organizational behavior at London Business School. “It shows how organizations and institutions might create programs that ultimately undermine their diversity goals.”
Adriana L. Germano, Sianna A. Ziegler, Laura Banham, and Sapna Cheryan, “Do Diversity Awards Discourage Applicants From Marginalized Groups From Pursuing More Lucrative Opportunities?” Psychological Science, vol. 32, no. 9, 2021.
Read more stories by Chana R. Schoenberger.