ABSTRACT
This chapter assists campuses in gauging the level of structural or compositional diversity of faculty, staff, and students. A critical approach to demography is essential to interpret the results of institution-level metrics. Two major conceptual approaches provide analytical perspectives on structural diversity in higher education: compositional demography and relational demography. The first conceptual approach, compositional demography, addresses structural attributes of the group and the impact on outcomes at multiple levels, including the department, division, and institution as a whole. A second major conceptual approach to demographic analysis is relational demography. This aspect of demographic study is rare in higher education today and requires a much more finely tuned analysis. Accreditation criteria provide a significant institutional rationale for measuring and analyzing the impact of structural diversity. Because accreditation focuses on processes of continuous improvement, longitudinal metrics will help identify how institutions are responding to the need for greater demographic diversity.
