DEI
Evaluating career service offices at schools of public health: Are programs servicing students equitably and delivering on the promise of a diversified public health workforce?
Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health
January 6, 2024—Public health schools and programs are designed to prepare graduates for the public health workforce, and enrolling more diverse students, but whether their graduates land jobs at equal rates has not been evaluated. Until now, the role of career service offices (CSOs) within Schools and Programs of Public Health has not been comprehensively studied, and even less information has been available on whether these programs serve students equitably.
A new study by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health has evaluated both the career services programs, and employment outcomes, of its graduates. The study found that neither program usage nor employment outcomes were statistically different by race or ethnicity; and that to ensure that programs are equitably designed and utilized by students of all backgrounds, the Office of Career Services can improve their services by assessing the resources they offer and evaluating their usage. The study is published in the journal Pedagogy in Health Promotion.
CSOs typically provide career counseling, review resumes, interview practice, job search guidance, and recruiting and networking events as well as connections with employers, with the goal of preparing public health graduates for careers in their fields of choice. The Mailman School Office of Career Services serves an enrollment of approximately 1,750 students and 11,000 alumni who receive lifetime career services access. Each year since 2017 the office has provided between 1,500 and 2,000 individual student advising appointments.
“Ensuring diverse graduates enter the workforce is an important aspect of career services programs, but these programs have been rarely evaluated regarding whether they serve diverse students equitably,” said Heather Krasna, PhD, EdM, MS, associate dean of Career and Professional Development at Columbia Mailman School. “Our goal was to design an evaluation for the career services programming offered at Columbia Mailman School and to assess whether career services were inclusively and equitably utilized by diverse students. We also assessed whether employment outcomes were equitable.”
The review found that certain resources fully met diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) guidelines, while there was room for improvement in other areas. The number of counseling appointments scheduled was not found to differ significantly by race or ethnicity; and neither employment outcome, job search length, nor salary were found to differ significantly by race or ethnicity.
Based on articles identified in the literature review, the researchers designed a rubric of guidelines to assess the extent to which resources provided to graduate public health students by career services offices were inclusive and accessible for students of diverse backgrounds. The researchers also evaluated the CSO’s virtual career development course on Canvas, an online Learning Management System.
The researchers both qualitatively evaluated career services programs and resources and quantitatively assessed whether students equitably utilized career services appointments. They also analyzed whether there were disparities in appointment utilization and employment outcomes by race, ethnicity and other variables by collecting appointment records and employment outcome data, de-identifying and encrypting the data, matching the data to enrollment records, and conducting a statistical analysis. The evaluation of services primarily comprised anonymous feedback surveys sent after each career advising appointment, learning outcomes from the session; and student opinion surveys for job fairs and workshops. Employer evaluation included ad-hoc discussions with recruiters and their comments from surveys at job fairs.
According to Krasna, rigorously evaluating career services resources to determine whether they are inclusive was a challenging but rewarding endeavor. “The data collection process for employment outcomes records alone is very labor intensive and many schools and programs of public health are very understaffed in career services support,” she says.
“Career Services professionals at schools and programs of public health can play an important role in reducing disparities in graduates’ career trajectories because career service providers advise students on how to apply, interview, and negotiate for professional opportunities, and connect students to employers in the public health field,” noted Krasna.
Krasna notes that CSOs serve as a crucial, but under-researched, link in the chain, guiding public health students as they become public health professionals. “We must continually invest in career services programs, ensure that its services are inclusive for all, and evaluate the office and its programs on an ongoing basis, in order to deliver on the promise of a diverse public health student population and ultimately diversify our public health workforce.”
Jessica Yuen of Columbia Mailman School is a co-author.
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
Founded in 1922, the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health pursues an agenda of research, education, and service to address the critical and complex public health issues affecting New Yorkers, the nation and the world. The Columbia Mailman School is the third largest recipient of NIH grants among schools of public health. Its nearly 300 multi-disciplinary faculty members work in more than 100 countries around the world, addressing such issues as preventing infectious and chronic diseases, environmental health, maternal and child health, health policy, climate change and health, and public health preparedness. It is a leader in public health education with more than 1,300 graduate students from 55 nations pursuing a variety of master’s and doctoral degree programs. The Columbia Mailman School is also home to numerous world-renowned research centers, including ICAP and the Center for Infection and Immunity. For more information, please visit www.mailman.columbia.edu.
Journal
Pedagogy in Health Promotion
Article Title
Evaluating Whether a Career Service Office Equitably Serves Diverse Students at a School of Public Health
Trump says he’ll end DEI at federal level, as report shows $1 billion in spending since 2021
Eva Terry
Mon, January 6, 2025
The University of Utah’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion office is pictured in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News
During his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump promised to eliminate federal spending on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, reversing course from President Joe Biden, who boosted DEI practices during his presidency.
Trump said he wants to fire DEI government employees and will “direct the Department of Justice to pursue federal civil rights cases against schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination.” He also said he would hold universities accountable “that persist in explicit unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity” by fining them the “entire amount of their endowment.”
Vice President-elect JD Vance sponsored the Dismantle DEI Act in the Senate last June “to eliminate all federal DEI programs and funding for federal agencies, contractors which receive federal funding, organizations which receive federal grants, and educational accreditation agencies.”
According to Axios, two first-day issues for Trump will be to “revoke federal DEI requirements” and “terminate federal staffers implementing DEI policies.”
Is DEI still popular in the private sector?
There are still a wide range of views on whether private companies and the federal government should promote DEI. For example, Bill Townsend, CEO and founder of College Rover, told NBC, “The big positive about DEI is that it exposes people to ethnic groups and viewpoints about ethnicities that are different from how they were raised at home.”
“We have to work and live among people who are different from us. DEI helps us manage that dynamic,” he continued. “Getting rid of DEI reinforces the fact that you don’t have to get along with everybody. It shouldn’t be that way.”
On the other hand, The Heritage Foundation claims DEI programs “don’t make people more tolerant of individual differences.”
Harvard public policy professor Iris Bohnet said that although about $8 billion is spent yearly in the U.S. on DEI trainings, “I did not find a single study that found that diversity training in fact leads to more diversity.” Bohnet added, “It is actually very hard to change mind-sets.”
How much does the federal government spend on DEI?
The grassroots organization, Parents Defending Education, released a report mid-December showing that since 2021, the federal government has spent over $1 billion in diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, grants.
Broken down, roughly $490 million went to DEI hiring, $343 million went to DEI programming and $169 million went to DEI based mental health/social emotional learning, according to the report.
In Utah, the Cook Center for Human Connection located in Pleasant Grove received $4 million to serve 25,000 sixth-eighth graders.
Anne Brown, the president/CEO of Cook Center for Human Connection, explained the work the organization does: “If your child’s dealing with anger or resentment or depression or anxiety, there’s courses that are directly to parents on these topics. It’s directed to you as a parent, to get you the resources you need so that you can support your child.”
In other states, schools have received grants funding antiracist social-emotional learning counseling for students, youth activism and race-based teacher affinity groups.
DOGE looking at DEI spending
As a nation, the attitude surrounding DEI initiatives appears to have tipped towards the negative since last February, according to Pew Research Center.
BECAUSE OF RIGHT WING MEDIA ANTI DEI CAMPAIGN
Matching this nationwide trend are Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, the leading figures behind the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which has a mandate to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies.”
Musk has consistently voiced concern over the DEI movement on X, most recently writing, “DEI is racism and sexism.” He has said the movement is founded in illegal practices since it “discriminates on the basis of race, gender and many other factors.”
Similarly, Ramaswamy, the soon to be head of the Department of Government Efficiency, wrote, “Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services has gone wild on DEI,” claiming there are 207 DEI employees across seven offices, and 294 taxpayer-funded DEI staffers.
He continued, “The price tag for payroll alone exceeds $67 million, with a majority of these DEI hires making six-figure salaries. The latest HHS budget request mentions ‘equity’ 829 times, with requests seeking to address ‘racial equity and environmental justice’ at the forefront. An efficient government has no place for DEI bloat. Time to DOGE it.”
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David Goldman, CNN
Mon, January 6, 2025 at 4:04 PM MST·3 min read
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A Quarter Pounder hamburger meal at a McDonald's in October 2024 in Brooklyn, New York.
McDonald’s is the latest US corporation — and among the largest — to back off some of its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices, as a Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action and conservative backlash to those programs continues to lead businesses to reevaluate their diversity pledges.
The company in a statement Monday said it is sunsetting its specific diversity goals, including requiring its suppliers to commit to certain DEI targets. And it will stop participating in external surveys that measure corporate diversity.
McDonald’s is also changing the name of its diversity team to the Global Inclusion Team — a common practice for many other companies that have rolled back diversity pledges.
“This name change is more fitting for McDonald’s in light of our inclusion value and better aligns with this team’s work,” McDonald’s said in the statement.
But the company said it has not abandoned its mission to maintain a diverse workforce. Instead, McDonald said that it will continue to support practices that foster inclusion in the workplace and across its operations, and it will work with its suppliers and vendors to discuss diversity and inclusion practices.
“McDonald’s position and our commitment to inclusion is steadfast,” the company said in its statement. “Since our founding, we’ve prided ourselves on understanding that the foundation of our business is people. As Fred Turner said, ‘We’re a people business, and never forget it.’”
The company said its new position was driven by a recent Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action and other corporations reevaluating their diversity initiatives. Online pressure, legal threats and customer opposition have led many companies, including Walmart, Ford, Harley-Davidson, John Deere and others to make changes to their DEI initiatives.
A new era of DEI practices
But some observers say that many high-profile corporate moves on DEI aren’t as large a change as they might seem.
“DEI isn’t going away. It’s just changing,” J. Danielle Carr, chief officer of inclusion at Lowenstein Sandler and president of the Association of Law Firm Diversity Professionals, told CNN in December. The organization found that just 14 of the Fortune 500 companies made any public changes to their DEI teams or programs in 2024.
DEI commitments can include anything from employee training, resource networks and recruiting practices to advance representation of people with various identities and backgrounds.
The fast food chain said it saw growth in leadership, supplier and franchisee diversity in 2024 due to its previous commitments. McDonald’s said 30% of its leaders in the United States were from underrepresented groups and 78% of employees “scored McDonald’s positively” in the company’s employee pulse survey. The company also said it met its goal to allocate 25% of supply-chain spending to diverse-owned suppliers by the end of 2025.
“We are immensely proud of these accomplishments, but we are not satisfied,” McDonald’s said in its statement.
Meanwhile, Costco recently acknowledged that the benefits of its DEI policies proved too rewarding to back down, despite backlash from activist shareholders aiming to end the company’s ambitions.
The warehouse club retailer said its supplier program has focused on expanding with small and diverse businesses and the efforts have helped attract and retain diverse employees.
“Among other things, a diverse group of employees helps bring originality and creativity to our merchandise offerings, promoting the ‘treasure hunt’ that our customers value,” Costco said in its proxy statement to investors.
McDonald’s said it will not cut franchisee affinity groups and business networks, which “promote entrepreneurship and foster supportive connections.” It will continue reporting company demographics each year, McDonald’s said in the statement, and remain committed to pay equity.
McDonald’s also said it would evaluate its work based on four beliefs: that it “thrives” when “shaped by the communities in which we operate;” that inclusivity gives it an advantage; that its priority is acting responsibly; and that individuals “perform their best when they belong.”
CNN’s Auzinea Bacon and Nathaniel Meyersohn contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with additional content
McDonald's just became the biggest fast food chain to scale back its DEI efforts
Francisco Velasquez
Mon, January 6, 2025
A McDonald’s restaurant in Miami, Florida. - Image: Joe Raedle (Getty Images)
McDonald’s is the latest major company to scale back its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts. It joins the ranks of Walmart, John Deere (DE), and Ford (F).
In a statement Monday, the fast food giant said it would retire its specific diversity goals, including those requiring suppliers to meet DEI targets, and will cease participating in external diversity surveys.
Chris Kempczinski, McDonald’s CEO, explained that the company is rebranding its diversity team, now calling it the “Global Inclusion Team,” as the name better reflects the company’s inclusion values and aligns with the team’s work.
The decision comes amid a Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action, as well as growing legal disputes and online criticism, which have prompted businesses across the U.S. to re-evaluate their DEI commitments.
McDonald’s emphasized that the shift reflects a focus on embedding inclusion practices directly into its daily operations, rather than relying on aspirational goals. “We are embedding inclusion in every process and operation that drives business growth,” the company stated. It also reaffirmed its ongoing commitments to pay equity, talent development, and supplier diversity, with an emphasis on building a workforce that reflects the communities it serves.
McDonald’s joins companies like Walmart, Ford, Harley-Davidson, and John Deere, which have similarly scaled back DEI initiatives. Other major tech companies, including Google, Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), and Zoom (ZM), have also reduced their DEI programs. However, other companies, like Costco (COST), are actively working to preserve their DEI initiatives despite mounting pressure. Costco’s shareholders are set to vote on the matter at the company’s annual meeting on Jan. 23.
As major corporations continue to navigate the shifting landscape of DEI, McDonald’s decision signals a broader trend, one that looks to integrate inclusion efforts more directly into core business operations, rather than focusing on external, public-facing targets. The change comes shortly after McDonald’s faced a major challenge when an E. Coli outbreak linked to its slivered onions left hundreds of people sick.
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