How Higher Education Reproduces Inequity

In the latest installment of Stanford’s online book conversation series, Academic Innovation for the Public Good, Dr. Sekile Nzinga spoke about her book Lean Semesters: How Higher Education Reproduces Inequity. Sekila is the Chief Equity Officer for the State of Illinois and former interim Chief Diversity Officer and Associate Provost of Diversity and Inclusion at Northwestern University. Her book addresses the exploitation and economic inequality that women of color, particularly Black women, face within universities.  

When speaking on how she started writing about this topic, Nzinga shared, “I published an edited volume entitled Laboring Positions: Black Women, Mothering and the Academy…and that book focused on a few broad categories: the imposition of maternalized labor that many black women navigate in higher education, racialized academic experiences of labor,...and the complexity of work life that black women were experiencing as academic mothers.”  

Later referring to this concept as “academic mammying,” Nzinga shed light on the compounded administrative and educational labor black women are pressured to perform when navigating through places of higher education. From administrator to faculty positions, black women are often overqualified and underpaid for the amount of additional diversity and equity teachings they provide for both students and peers alike. Serving as caretakers of the University's “children,” black women are often sidled into these roles without having agency in shaping what these positions actually look like.  

Throughout the conversation, Nzinga further interrogated the paradox of economic struggle and advanced education that her contributors unearthed in her first book. In a time where going to college is seen as a right of passage in order to live a successful life, there is increasing financial precarity in not only financing that education, but in also acquiring adequate career prospects following one’s graduation.  

Speaking to this haunting reality, Nzinga shared that a possible solution could be the broad cancellation of student loan debt. She says, “Connected to canceling student loan debt is to, of course, make college truly accessible...These are things that I believe we should be mobilizing around if we say that education is a common good.”  

Connected to canceling student loan debt is to, of course, make college truly accessible...These are things that I believe we should be mobilizing around if we say that education is a common good. 

Overall, Sekile Nzinga and her book highlight financial inaccessibility, insufficient professional preparation, and a lack of true investment in DEI initiatives and educators as main issues within systems of higher education. Ending on a note of action, Nzinga called for universities to invest in their student, staff, and faculty communities.  

Rather than financing new capital projects or fancy dormitories, university leadership should redirect those funds back into the students and back into faculty salaries. They should consider the existing needs of their communities and double down on support for such programs as childcare or tuition assistance, so that their campuses can thrive. Learn more about Dr. Nzinga's talk here.