Topic: Diversity today is considered central to the capacity of higher education institutions to thrive in an increasingly diverse society (Garces, 2014). Higher education institutions across the globe can be viewed as sites of diversity and social mixing, who are putting forth efforts to increase educational opportunities for all students (Plotner and Marshall, 2014). The implementation of diversity policies has been argued with benefits for the student population, but also with benefits for the higher education institutions for a number of reasons, e.g., increasing internationalization efforts or adhering to the social dimension of higher education. However, they should first and foremost benefit students from diverse backgrounds, the group for which they were developed and initiated in the first place (Brooks, 2020). Policy processes are often criticized for their disconnect between planning and action and it is unclear, to which extent diverse student groups actually perceive (positive) effects from the implementation of these policies.

Objectives: To gain a deeper understanding of formal or institutional diversity policy, it is necessary to understand how such policy is experienced by those who are most directly affected by it. A large proportion of empirical studies in this field unfortunately fail to give students a voice (Zimdars, 2010). The main objective of this paper is to present a systematic review which provides an overview of empirical evidence depicting the impact of diversity policies on students in higher education. There have been no systematic reviews known to the author, which focus on the effects of diversity policies on students by querying students themselves.

Research questions:What is known about the impact and effects of diversity policies in higher education from the perspectives of diverse student groups and how can this evidence base be described? How can this knowledge inform new practice in higher education policy?

The systematic review started with a literature search in two stages, organized in ‘covidence’ software for systematic review management (https://www.covidence.org/): The first stage consisted of a keyword-based database search in EBSCO, JSTOR and SCOPUS. The second stage consisted of an individual journal search in several higher education journals. In total, a number of 1.090 articles were collected before duplicates were removed (566 duplicates). The selection of studies adhered to specific inclusion criteria. 524 articles were assumably fit for the title and abstract screening, to which the inclusion criteria were applied: the article is relevant to the topic, the article includes empirical research from the perspective of students, was published between 2000-2020 in a scientific journal, has at least one diversity dimension at the core of the study (e.g., gender, disability, ethnicity), the publication language is English, and focuses on the student’s perspective (not staff or faculty). After title and abstract screening, 368 of 524 studies were considered irrelevant (156 studies remained). 156 studies were included in the full text review and 21 studies were finally included in the systematic review after full text screening. Two themes emerged from inducting coding in the full text review stage: first, diversity policies aiming at opening access to higher education for diverse students and, second, diversity policies aiming at widening participation for diverse students during their studies. In the first theme, three subcategories emerged: opening enrolment and admission processes, relieving entry exams for diverse students, and setting up scholarship systems for diverse students. In the second theme, four subcategories emerged: student behaviour, connection among peer students, teacher characteristics, and institutional support. Inductive coding was pursued regarding the concrete effects of the policies on diverse students.

Across the 21 extracted studies, the characteristics varied widely. The geographical placement covered six continents. Eleven studies were published between 2011 and 2020, ten studies between 2000 and 2010. Of the 21 studies, eleven of them used a purely qualitative research approach to investigate the effects of diversity policies on diverse student groups. Five studies contained a purely quantitative design, and three studies combined both empirical approaches in the sense of a mixed-methods study. Regarding the diversity dimensions addressed, the studies had a broad focus: 8 studies addressed gender, 6 ethnicity, race or migration background of students, 3 age, another 3 ability and disability, and 2 sexual orientation, transsexuality and LGBTQ. Another 5 studies addressed socio-economic status, social class or poverty of students, 4 studies addressed nationality or internationality, and 2 studies the geographic location of students or regionality. Religion and spirituality did not play a role in any of the studies. Within the first topic, (1) opening enrolment and admission processes for diverse students, e.g. studies were included which address the enrolment of Syrian refugee students in Turkey (Arar et al., 2020); minority student enrolment other than Han in China (James, 2006); transgender admission (Nanney and Brunsma, 2017); or access of working-class students (Reay, et al., 2002). Within the second topic, (2) the chance to widen the participation of diverse student groups highly depended on student behaviour and teacher characteristics. An important theme within topic 2 was institutional support meaning support in entering buildings for e.g., students with disabilities, or student support services for e.g., working class students or students from rural areas. The findings provide an initial window into the body of research on the effects of diversity policies, but further research needs to be undertaken to provide deeper insight into students’ assessment of these effects.

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