Neoliberalizing Diversity in Liberal Arts College Life (Higher Education in Critical Perspective: Practices and Policies)

As neoliberal market policies become increasingly pervasive beyond economics, the concept of diversity has expanded from corporations to universities and colleges. By focusing on how neoliberal diversity operates at one small liberal arts college, author Bonnie Urciuoli explores the relationship between higher education and corporate practices, how liberal arts colleges recruit diverse students, and how those students’ lives are institutionally organized. Far from being synonymous with race or other forms of social difference, she finds, diversity is an institutional construct frequently contrasting with the reality of students’ lives within these educational spaces.