The Fallacy of ‘Treating All Students the Same’

Do scientific investigators have an obligation to foster inclusive environments in their research groups? That question, and what the answer means in practice, lies at the heart of recent attacks on efforts to encourage the principal investigators on federal research grants to work toward creating equitable research opportunities. Until recently, such efforts often took the form of inclusion plans attached to grant proposals, a requirement aimed at broadening participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Many scientific funding agencies required such a plan, until the practice was abruptly ended by the Trump administration.

Despite the rhetoric that often underlies these attacks, some basic fact-checking reveals that diversity quotas have never been required for scientific funding, nor was there ever a mandate for proactive participation in diversity, equity and inclusion activities. Rather, inclusion plans and similar documents were intended to foster awareness of the racism that still confronts underrepresented students in STEM disciplines. Those biases exist whether the federal government acknowledges them or not.

Here, we explore a more fundamental question regarding equity in higher education: What does it mean to run an inclusive research group or classroom? Our suspicion is that few in academia, including many self-described opponents of DEI, would openly oppose the notion that more diversity is welcome, especially in STEM disciplines where it remains sorely lacking. Where opinions differ markedly is in regard to what (if any) affirmative efforts should be made to rectify that situation.

It’s worth remembering how the phrase “affirmative action” entered the lexicon, before it was twisted beyond recognition and equated with racial quotas by defenders of a do-nothing status quo. It comes from President Kennedy’s executive order mandating that federal contractors must “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” That is hardly a call for quotas. From its inception, however, the concept of affirmative action did imply an obligation to act.

When the notion of social obligation is raised, we find that opponents of DEI efforts often respond with a dismissive retort that “I treat everyone the same.” That response is an attempt to avoid self-reflection and to derail serious discussion of persistent inequalities, systemic barriers and structural racism in academic science. Versions of this remark can be found in recent attacks on inclusivity statements in research grants. Often the objection is phrased as a rhetorical question: Why should an applicant be required to write an inclusion plan if their research group does not discriminate?

There is an incredible amount of privilege packed into that question. In practice, “treat everyone the same” is usually code for “treat everyone according to the paradigm established by my own career.” That, in turn, often means “treat everyone as if they are willing and able to work 80 hours a week for a graduate student stipend or postdoc salary.”

Given that the median academic scientist is a white man, who is more likely to be married to a partner outside of STEM as compared to his female counterpart, and with an individual salary that is comparable to the median household income for an entire American family, this kind of homophilic bias puts the onus on any trainee who might not share the same background. Factor in the “battle fatigue” that is frequently reported by students of color, and one has an environment in which it becomes a trainee’s fault if they cannot live up to the adviser’s unreasonable (but consistent) standard.

And the standard is unreasonable, especially for trainees from underrepresented backgrounds, who often have less direct pathways to the Ph.D. degree as compared to white counterparts. For example, underrepresented minorities are more likely to have caregiver responsibilities, and caregiver students are also disproportionately women. Black and Hispanic students are more likely to experience food or housing insecurity while in college. Meanwhile, the proportion of nonwhite undergraduates, and those from impoverished backgrounds, is rising. These are tomorrow’s graduate students—if we will have them.

Underrepresented faculty face barriers as well. For faculty with children, the proportion who report working more than 60 hours per week skews sharply along gender lines. Women in STEM face pressure to defer childbirth until after their independent careers have begun (typically into their 30s), which is at least partly responsible for the fact that women in postdoctoral positions are less likely to prefer academic research careers. This manifests as a sharp drop in participation by women after the Ph.D. stage. For example, 41 percent of chemistry graduate students are women, but this plunges to 26 percent at the postdoc level.

Unless and until we are willing to address overwork culture and the “work-devotion schema” by which academic excellence is assessed, STEM will continue to be the domain of the socioeconomically advantaged, and predominantly that of white men.

Long ago, a program director at the National Science Foundation told one of us that the NSF’s mission was “scientific workforce development.” This might seem odd, as one’s inclination is to imagine that its mission is simply to fund scientific research, but we’ve come to embrace this point of view. By accepting federal funding for our research, we accept a responsibility to provide stewardship for the discipline. That means an obligation to help correct an unhealthy STEM ecosystem whose demographics do not reflect those of the country as a whole.

It matters who is doing the science, as a diverse workforce is likely to approach problems differently and may help to avoid an echo chamber of groupthink that can stymie scientific progress. This viewpoint on diversity is actually broadly popular among American workers and correlates with increased innovation and better financial performance in industry.

Improving mentorship for underrepresented trainees doesn’t have to be complicated, but it must begin with some awareness. First, it is imperative to recognize the circumstances in which graduate students exist in the academic STEM space. They are engaged in developing a deep understanding of complex topics, learning methods for conducting research and sometimes teaching classes. At the same time, graduate students may experience feelings of isolation and competition within a research group, impostor syndrome, or microaggressions and tokenization. All of these detract from a sense of belonging, but they are especially taxing for underrepresented students.

Faculty, and especially research group leaders, need to acknowledge the power that they wield over their trainees and be mindful of their role as gatekeepers. Faculty constitute the admissions committee, they decide who is accepted into research groups and they serve on exam and dissertation committees, all the while functioning as de facto small business owners. There are very few guardrails on these sole proprietors, who may demand long hours from their trainees with deleterious effects on student mental health.

At the same time, graduate students need the support of their PI in the form of guidance through research decision-making, advising, editing and ultimately approving manuscripts, and in myriad other ways throughout the course of a Ph.D. This dichotomy can pit student against PI, and feelings of isolation abound in the graduate student community.

To combat the mentally taxing aspects of graduate school, PIs should attempt to interact authentically with their trainees, making space for students to be their authentic selves and to foster connections and communal relationships. Faculty should put serious effort toward multicultural competence so that they may comfortably interact with students from various racial, ethnic and social backgrounds. They need to make space for students with nonbinary gender identities, who often experience a double burden: anxiety caused by graduate school, in tandem with feeling targeted by the “trans panic” that is presently gripping the national psyche. Clearly, a transgender graduate student faces different stressors as compared to a student of color, and treating each “the same” is both an ineffective mentoring strategy and an abnegation of the mentor’s responsibilities. PIs should recognize that they are models for how students ought to behave, and they should work with their trainees to develop and follow rules and norms that honor diverse backgrounds.

Finally, it must be acknowledged that STEM graduate students are conducting research, teaching and navigating the mental health minefield of graduate education, all for a stipend that is less than a living wage. The average graduate stipend in chemistry was about $26,000 in 2021, and it is not uncommon to hear of graduate students obtaining a second job or doing gig work to get by. Often, this must be done on the sly, as outside employment may be forbidden by the program or the adviser.

While we acknowledge the difficulties in raising graduate stipends in a climate where federal research grants will not increase to match, it remains true that by failing to pay students a living wage, we are excluding those who cannot tolerate financial insecurity. This includes individuals with families and those who are economically disadvantaged, who might otherwise be perfectly capable of succeeding in graduate school. It is likely one factor to explain why tenure-track faculty are up to 25 times more likely to have a parent with a Ph.D., as compared to the U.S. population at large.

The factors that drive underrepresented students out of STEM majors are undoubtedly complex, yet we know that equitable and inclusive teaching practices help to narrow achievement gaps for such students, as does evidence-based reform to pedagogy. Treating students like human beings shouldn’t be controversial, yet over time the graduate student training model has evolved into a kind of “STEM industrial complex,” one in which trainees exist solely to further the career of their group leader. Trainees who become professors are treated like trophies by their supervisors, while the rest find little career support. A more humanistic approach should be demanded.