This chapter shows that preferences do not differ greatly when we separate students out by their race/ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic background. All groups favor applicants and faculty candidates from underrepresented minority racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups. The one area where we see preference polarization is with respect to gender non-binary applicants and faculty candidates. Women tend to favor gender non-binary individuals but men disfavor them, consistent with intolerance among men toward gender non-conformity.

This chapter describes the preferences we estimate on attitudes toward undergraduate admissions and faculty recruitment across our full population of student particpants. It shows that students prioritize academic and professional achievement most, but also that they give preference to all underrepresented minority racial and ethnic groups over whites, to women and gender non-binary applicants over men, and to applicants from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds over the wealthy. They also give preference to recruited varsity athletes and to legacy applicants.

Debates over diversity on campus are intense, they command media attention, and the courts care about how efforts to increase diversity affect students’ experiences and attitudes. Yet we know little about what students really think because measuring attitudes on politically charged issues is challenging. This book adopts an innovative approach to addressing this challenge.

This chapter shows that, even across our deepest political divides, we find little polarization of preferences on admissions and faculty recruitment. Breaking out participants by party, preferences differ, with Democrats favoring all underrepresented minority groups whereas Republicans are, statistically, indifferent toward non-whites and women (although they disfavor gender non-binary applicants). Most surprisingly, when we break out participants by whether they state support for, or opposition to, consideration of race in college admissions on a conventional survey question, both groups give preference to members of underrepresented minority racial/ethnic groups relative to whites, and to women relative to men, in our conjoint experiments. Preferences as revealed in holistic choices differ from those as revealed in standard surveys.