Looking for a real multicultural experience? Head to Chad in north-central Africa where 8.6 million residents belong to more than 100 ethnic groups or to Togo, home to 37 tribal groups that speak one of 39 languages and share little in the way of a common culture or history.
But if you find a kaleidoscope of cultures distracting, then consider a visit to Argentina, Haiti or the isolated Comoros islands off the southeast coast of Africa. They rank among the least culturally diverse countries in the world.
This multicultural map of the world is based on an analysis of data reported in a new study of cultural diversity and economic development by researcher Erkan Gören of the University of Oldenberg in Germany.
In his paper, Goren measured the amount of cultural diversity in each of more than 180 countries. To arrive at his estimates, he combined data on ethnicity and race with a measure based on the similarity of languages spoken by major ethnic or racial groups. “The hypothesis is that groups speaking the same or highly related languages should also have similar cultural values,” said Goren in an email.
Together he used his language and ethnicity measures to compute a cultural diversity score for each country that ranged from 0 to 1, with larger scores indicating more diversity and smaller values representing less.
To rank colleges and universities by diversity, we took a broad view of related issues, including ethnicity, geographic origin, economic status, gender, and sexual orientation. Work at least.
The usual suspects lead the list of culturally diverse countries: Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, Togo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These and other African countries typically rank high on any diversity index because of their multitude of tribal groups and languages. The only western country to break into the top 20 most diverse is Canada. The United States ranks near the middle, slightly more diverse than Russia but slightly less diverse than Spain.
Argentina, the Comoros, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Rwanda and Uruguay rank as the world’s least diverse countries. Argentina may be a surprise, what with all those Germans and Italians pouring into the country after one world war or the other. But Spanish is nearly universally spoken in Argentina, 97% of the country is white and more than nine-in-ten Argentines are at least nominally Roman Catholic, according to the CIA’s World Factbook.
The presence of Rwanda at the bottom of the list likely is, in part, a grim reminder of the mass slaughter of Tutsi by the dominant Hutu majority in 1994 in what came to be known as the Rwandan Genocide.
A caution: Cultural diversity is a different concept than ethnic diversity. As a result, a map of the world reflecting ethnic diversity looks somewhat different than the one based on Goren’s cultural diversity measure that combines language and ethnicity profiles of a country.
The Harvard Institute of Economic Research developed a map similar to the on posted above based on Goren’s findings. (See it here).
A comparison of the Harvard and Goren maps show that the most diverse countries in the world are found in Africa. Both maps also suggest that the United States falls near the middle, while Canada and Mexico are more diverse than the US.
The largest disagreements between the two analyses occur in South America. The Harvard group places Brazil slightly above the upper-middle range of its diversity scale, in part because of its large mixed-race population. However, Goren ranks Brazil as one of the least diverse countries in the world, in large part because virtually all Brazilians speak Portuguese regardless of their race or ethnic background.
Top UK universities need to do more to encourage black and minority ethnic students to take up prestigious courses and help reduce “segregation” within higher education, a new report has warned.
Black and ethnic minority (BME) students tend to be concentrated in newer universities and large cities such as London, according to researchers at the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Bath.
Meanwhile, white students are statistically more likely to attend predominantly white institutions.
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Certain subjects across the majority of universities, most significantly medicine, dentistry and veterinary sciences, require much greater diversity among students, the report suggests.
While some ethnic groups are over-represented compared to their share of the overall UK population for these courses, for 2014/15, only 0.3 per cent of all new students starting out on medical or dentistry courses were Black Caribbean - a total of just 25 across the whole of the UK.
For the same year, intake for veterinary sciences was nearly 95 per cent white - with fewer than 50 students starting out on new veterinary courses for 2014/15 coming from non-white backgrounds.
The researchers behind the Institute for Policy Research policy brief suggest such enormous inequalities in ethnic composition for key professional degrees has significant implications for social mobility.
They also argue these statistics pose challenges for the future make-up of professions, most notably medicine, if its workforce is to reflect the diversity of the people and communities they serve.
Other courses that face challenges in achieving a greater diversity in students include those in the creative arts.
The report suggests London's elite arts institutions are failing to reflect the diversity of the city in which they are located.
In order to diversify the arts sector and avoid a future white-dominated 'high culture', change is needed in recruiting practices they suggest.
The study highlights the most ethnically diverse universities tend to be those in and around London.
Yet there is a disparity in the split of students attending universities in ethnically-diverse cities, such as in the Midlands.
Their findings show that across the board, students from white-dominated neighbourhoods go on to attend the least diverse universities for ethnic mix.
This, say the authors, points to divisions in the ethnic composition of UK universities and throws up challenges for university leaders around access, equality and social mobility.
Recruitment responses must “go beyond lip-service”, they argue.
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Dr Michael Donnelly, project leader at the University of Bath, said: “Our analyses show that universities themselves differ markedly in their ethnic diversity.
”This is creating barriers to social mobility for young people from ethnic minority backgrounds and having significant knock-on effects for the ethnic diversity of key professions.
“The bigger issue this presents is one of the lack of ethnic mixing. If we are to create a more tolerant UK society where people are aware and respectful of cultural and ethnic difference it is vital that greater mixing happens at these early stages in young people's lives.”
Policy recommendations include a specific focus for courses that are under-represented, such as medicine, and doing more to diversify recruitment, in particular for prestigious arts institutions.
Press Association