EDI in admissions and hiring: the case in favour

This article is part of our Prof v. Prof summer debate series, where academics take opposing viewpoints on hot topics in higher education. Read all the articles from the series here. 

A persistent claim in university hiring and admissions is that equity displaces merit and weakens excellence. This false binary casts candidates from underrepresented groups as less meritorious or deserving and enables their appointment or admissions to be dismissed as “diversity hires” while presuming dominant-group candidates were selected on merit. This assumption is neither neutral nor supported by evidence. It ignores how familiarity, institutional advantage, and unequal opportunity shape both the candidate field and judgments about it. The claim also misconstrues how merit is produced, recognized and attributed through these processes. 

Universities must uphold academic and professional standards and meet human rights and equality obligations. This requires more than applying criteria uniformly. Institutions decide where to search, which achievements count, what their criteria measure and how evidence of accomplishment and potential are interpreted. Equity strengthens excellence when it makes those judgments more accurate, relevant, and rigorous. 

Excellence is the demonstrated and prospective capacity to succeed in a position or program and contribute to its purposes. Committees infer it from academic performance, scholarly contributions, references and interviews, whose value depends on what they measure, and how they were produced and interpreted. A credible claim to merit therefore requires scrutiny at three interconnected stages: how the field is formed, what the criteria measure, and how achievement and potential are recognized. 

Studies on academic evaluations show why recognition requires scrutiny. Julie Posselt’s Inside Graduate Admissions found that graduate admissions committees at 10 top-ranked U.S. universities genuinely believed they were protecting academic quality. The problem was not an absence of standards, but that quality was often defined narrowly. Committees relied heavily on institutional prestige, conventional academic trajectories, standardized indicators, risk and “fit” as proxies for future success. These indicators could appear rigorous while favouring applicants who mirrored established patterns and reproducing hierarchies through criteria with weaker predictive value than assumed. 

Michèle Lamont’s How Professors Think likewise found no single, uncontested, definition of excellence. Peer reviewers negotiated among disciplinary understandings of originality, significance, methodological rigour and intellectual contribution. Without dismissing expert judgement, Lamont showed that evaluations were interpretive and plural, requiring vigilance against institutional status, intellectual familiarity and preference for work resembling the reviewers’ own. Committees can sincerely seek excellence while using conventions that recognize some forms of achievement more readily than others. 

Selection can favour sameness through affinity, homophily and cultural cloning. Familiar credentials, networks or styles may appear more promising because they resemble those of insiders. Judgments of “fit” can convert familiarity into merit. Equity requires committees to define the contribution sought and distinguish relevant capacity from personal affinity. 

Research shows selection inequality begins before applications are reviewed; unequal opportunities have already shaped applicants’ records. The “Matthew effect” describes how early access to research opportunities, resources, mentorship and recognition compounds advantage. Applicants’ records therefore reflect both accomplishment and unequal opportunities to develop and demonstrate capacity. 

In a 2015 study entitled “What happens before?” Katherine Milkman and colleagues varied only the names on identical emails from fictitious perspective doctoral students to more than 6,500 U.S. professors. Professors responded more often to students perceived as white men than to those perceived as women or racialized men. This affected access to advice and research opportunities. 

Together, these studies trace different points in the selection process. Opportunity shapes who builds a record; recruitment, who enters the field; criteria, which capacities become visible; and evaluation, which achievements receive recognition. By the time a committee decides, much of the field has already been structured. 

A credible process should answer at least three questions: Did the search reach the relevant field of talent? Do the criteria measure the capacities the position and program require? Did the assessment distinguish achievement and potential from prestige, familiarity and accumulated opportunity? These questions test selection rigour and fairness. 

In admissions, institutions must define capacities for success, identify relevant evidence and apply criteria consistently. Grades matter, but transcripts do not report all conditions under which performance was produced. Experiences, responsibilities, accomplishments and progression may illuminate judgment, persistence, creativity and capacity to learn. Context does not displace standards; it clarifies achievement. 

In faculty hiring, publication counts, journal prestige, citations and grants may be relevant but do not directly measure scholarly quality. They also reflect disciplinary conventions, career stage, resources, visibility and cumulative advantage. The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment cautions against using journal metrics as proxies for research quality or individual contributions. Indicators should inform expert judgment, not replace it. 

A university cannot identify the strongest talent if searches repeatedly circulate through the same institutions, networks and intellectual traditions. Broadening the field enlarges the achievement inquiry and potential available for assessment. Recognition at entry is insufficient if institutional conditions restrict whose ideas are heard, work supported and capacities developed. 

Canadian equality law reinforces this approach: identical treatment does not achieve substantive equality, nor is every consideration of a protected characteristic discriminatory. The Andrews case in 1989 rejected identical treatment as sufficient. The 1987 case Action Travail des Femmes v. CNR recognized systemic discrimination through interconnected employment practices, occupational structures and informal norms. The Fraser case in 2020 confirmed that an apparently neutral rule may violate substantive equality by perpetuating disadvantage. 

Canadian law also distinguishes discrimination from measures designed to reduce it. Section 15(2) of the Charter protects programs ameliorating disadvantage. The 2008 Kapp case explained that such programs further substantive equality. Human rights statutes similarly protect appropriately designed special programs whose objectives, design and relationship to documented disadvantage remain defensible. 

The 1984 Royal Commission on Equality in Employment, led by Rosalie Silberman Abella, translated substantive equality into an institutional framework, examining how recruitment, definitions of qualifications, workplace norms and opportunity networks restrict participation. It directed institutions to examine how systems operate, their effects and whether ameliorative measures respond to documented disadvantage, while preserving qualifications and fair procedures. The 2023 Employment Equity Act Review Task Force, led by Adelle Blackett, reaffirmed this approach, describing employment equity as “substantive equality in action in the workplace” and emphasizing proactive barrier removal rather than reliance on individual complaints after discrimination occurs. Universities should apply the same evidentiary scrutiny throughout selection. 

Equity strengthens excellence by improving how universities identify talent, achievement and potential through broad and inclusive recruitment, relevant criteria, contextual interpretation and disciplinary expert judgment. Universities that misrecognize talent do more than disadvantage applicants. They narrow the questions pursued, the knowledge produced, students reached and institutional capacities developed. Merit is not self-certifying. Its credibility depends on the quality of the institutional judgment used to identify it. Equity makes that judgment more rigorous.