If so, you’ve probably noticed how often they promise students academic and social experiences customized to their already-established preferences, tailor-fitted to their predetermined interests, contoured to the particular and peculiar niches they want to inhabit.
There’s a profusion of affinity groups. There are themed living arrangements that allow students with similar backgrounds and overlapping hobbies to huddle together. In terms of curriculum, there’s enormous freedom, which can translate into the ability to chart and stick to a narrow path with fellow travelers whose perspectives are much the same as yours.
.. Shaiko professed amazement at so much toil “to create diverse incoming classes” but so little to “nudge students into interactions outside of their comfort zones.”
.. “College is a place where trust-fund kids, Pell Grant kids and all these people who would not normally be together in our society are living in very close proximity, and we need to take advantage of that,” Carol Quillen, the president of Davidson College, near Charlotte, N.C., acknowledged.
.. More schools would require students to mingle in, and even contribute to, the cities and towns around them. They’d also pay greater heed to how gagged so many politically conservative faculty members and students feel.