High-impact practices and students of color: Investigating the hypothesis of harm

Abstract

Concerns have been raised that high-impact practices may create opportunities for impactful but highly negative experiences for students of color by creating situations in which students may be exposed to microaggressions and other racist behaviors. To test the hypothesis of negative HIP impact for students of color, we investigated three related questions using data from the 2015 administration of the National Survey of Student Engagement: 1) Do students of color who participate in HIPs evidence lower perceptions of quality of interactions with others on campus, and faculty in particular, relative to their peers who did not participate in HIPs?; 2) Do students of color who participate in HIPs evidence lower perceptions of campus support than their peers who did not participate in HIPs?; and 3) Do students of color who participate in HIPs evaluate their overall educational experience less favorably than their peers who did not participate in HIPs?