In academia, a cookie-cutter approach to teaching and learning doesn’t always work when students come from diverse geographic regions, cultures and ethnicities.
University students in a classroom. (Credit: ferrantraite/Getty Images Signature)
This article, by high school student Sophie de Lavandeyra was produced out of News Decoder’s school partnership program. Sophie is a student at The Hewitt School, a News Decoder partner institution. Learn more about how News Decoder can work with your school.
When Marcy Burstiner began teaching at a small public university in the forests of Northern California, she joined an overwhelmingly white and male faculty. At the time, in 2004, the campus mirrored the surrounding rural county: isolated and homogeneous.
Described by Burstiner as one of the “whitest” campuses in the California State system, Burstiner watched the student body shift over the next 15 years, becoming nearly 50% students of color, many from immigrant families.
“The [university was] totally unprepared,” said Burstiner, a former journalism professor who taught at this university for nearly two decades. “We brought in students with promises of opportunity and safety. But the support? It wasn’t there.” Burstiner is also News Decoder’s Educational News Director.
The infrastructure, faculty and surrounding community struggled to keep up, and today, attempts to do so are being quashed.
In recent years, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs — once seen as essential to student support — have become flashpoints in national debates in the United States. State legislatures have proposed bans. University leaders are being pressured to cut back on multicultural centers, ethnic studies and even mental health support targeted toward immigrant students.
Attacking DEI
As of March 2025, the U.S. Department of Education has opened investigations into more than 50 colleges and universities for alleged violations of diversity initiatives. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, 327 colleges across 39 states have altered or eliminated DEI policies in response to recent political pressure, including the threat of losing federal funding.
These changes include closing DEI offices, revising diversity mission statements and scaling back targeted support programs.
According to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal, immigrant-origin students now account for 32% of all U.S. college students — a striking figure that underscores how rapidly the student body has diversified nationwide. Back in 2000, immigrant-origin students made up about 20% of college enrollments, highlighting a significant demographic shift in American higher education over the past two decades.
“We’re seeing the same resistance, but louder,” Burstiner said. “The idea of supporting students of color or immigrant students is suddenly political. But these students have always been here. Now we’re just pretending they’re new.”
With other California State University campuses overcrowded, Burstiner’s school began recruiting heavily from Southern California, especially Los Angeles. Many new students were Latinx, Black, Asian American or children of immigrants, and many were the first in their families to attend college.
“It was a seismic shift,” she recalled.
But the system wasn’t ready to shift with them.
Promises without infrastructure
Burstiner’s university focused on increasing enrolment numbers, but not always on student support. Recruiting these students came with a promise of safety and opportunity, Burstiner said. “But there were no restaurants that students recognized. No cultural spaces. No salons for Black hair. Even the town wasn’t welcoming. It was culture shock.”
While the university added multicultural centers and affinity housing, Burstiner said it wasn’t enough to prevent students from feeling isolated. “Everyone was siloed,” she said. “That’s not integration.”
Off campus, students faced racial discrimination and housing challenges. On campus, faculty lacked the training — or sometimes the awareness — to support students navigating language barriers, financial stress or legal uncertainty due to their immigration status.
While federal immigration policy didn’t directly spark the demographic change, its ripple effects were everywhere. Laws passed in the late 1990s and early 2000s, such as the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, expanded deportation grounds and limited public benefits for undocumented immigrants, including access to higher education.
In a 2021 report, the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration found that approximately 427,000 undocumented students were enrolled in U.S. higher education, 141,000 of whom were eligible for DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
The 2012 policy offered temporary protection from deportation and work authorization to undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. Many faced legal and logistical barriers, including travel restrictions and ineligibility for federal aid. Burstiner recalled students who couldn’t visit family abroad without risking re-entry. Others faced housing discrimination and racial profiling in the town’s shops and neighborhoods.
Understanding the needs of students
The school had already begun diversifying its faculty by the time the student body shifted, replacing a previously all-white, male department with a more gender-diverse group and eventually hiring more professors of color.
But Burstiner emphasized that this alone wasn’t enough. Even with a more representative faculty, the institution still struggled to support immigrant and first-generation students in more profound, structural ways. “They were flailing around,” she said, describing the university’s rushed attempts to respond to rising student needs without a clear plan or adequate resources.
“What’s terrifying is that the conversation has shifted,” Burstiner said. “It used to be about how to support students better. Now it’s about whether we’re even allowed to try. One of the things they want [Harvard] to correct is student empowerment,” Burstiner said. “That’s what university is all about!”
She compared it to a parent who wants a child to grow into independence, but only on their terms. “They want young people to be empowered, but once students say, ‘No, I’m not going to do that,’ they get really upset,” she said.
Burstiner described how universities can promote critical thinking in theory, while pulling back when students question institutional norms. It raises a larger question: Can there be true intellectual freedom without student voice?
She argued that universities aren’t just places of learning — they reflect a society’s priorities. And right now, she sees a dangerous disconnect. “Immigrant students are still arriving. First-generation students are still enrolling. But the systems meant to serve them are being hollowed out,” she said.
Her former university may have struggled with inclusion, but at least, she says, there was room to try. Now, she worries schools are being stripped of even that freedom.
“We talk so much about free speech,” she said, “but we don’t want to hear from the students who actually have something to say.”
The views and citations expressed by this student journalist are their own and not those of their school or any person or organization affiliated or doing business with their school.
Three questions to consider:
1. What are some of the challenges students from a big city might face attending university in a small, rural area?
2. Why is the current government in the United States attacking diversity, equity and inclusion programs?
3. How much of a responsibility do you think a school or university has in making students feel comfortable and welcome?
Sophie de Lavandeyra is a junior at The Hewitt School in New York City. She participates in several school initiatives, including serving as head of the debate team and participating in the Action Research Collaborative. Outside the classroom, she trains in competitive dance and enjoys playing piano in her free time.