Does cultural diversity matter? Effects of higher education diversity communication on students’ responses

The expansion of the European Economic Area and global development has led to a growing heterogeneous student population in higher education. In this context, universities have become institutions operating in a global market, which similar to corporations, strive to attract a diverse student body to future-proof their system. One of the actions that universities take in that sense is to adopt a diversity strategy, such as the ones elaborated by Ely and Thomas, which tells stakeholders why the institutions want to diversify. Still, diverse students hold different perspectives regarding the role of diversity in education, which can lead to different student responses. Building on findings in the corporate environment, where diversity communication has been extensively researched, four concepts that measure how people respond to diversity communication have been deemed relevant to the university context, namely perceived sense of belonging, attractiveness, perceived P-O fit, and skepticism. The Netherlands is one of the countries that accommodates numerous international-oriented universities that host both Dutch and international students. However, insufficient studies have reviewed the extent to which being a Dutch or international student moderates the effect of Ely and Thomas diversity strategies on student perceptions. To understand these relationships, a between-subject design online experiment survey was developed. To test hypotheses, four experimental conditions were designed, namely three conditions that each contained one of the Ely and Thomas diversity perspectives, and one control condition. The study sample consisted of 197 responses, where participants were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions. One way and two-way ANOVA analyses were conducted to test hypotheses. The study confirms that the diversity strategies Dutch higher education institutions adopt on their website influence student perceptions. In particular, the results suggest that the discrimination and fairness, respectively the integration and learning perspectives positively influence the perceived sense of belonging and perceived P-O fit of students. Moreover, no moderation effect of students being part of a Dutch or international group was found for the relationship between Ely and Thomas diversity approaches and student perceptions. The following study contributes to the limited amount of research on the topic of diversity communication in higher education and it highlights the need for further research to improve the management of culturally diverse students.