Afrocentricity

The concept of cultural diversity in higher education in the United States has been significantly restricted. Discussions and debates have focused primarily on enhancing the presence of students and faculty of color, with a special emphasis on recruitment and retention (Blackwell, 1987, 1988; Carter Epps, 1989; Oliver Pettigrew, 1991). In other words, cultural diversity has been conceptualized primarily as the diversification of racial characteristics of students and faculty. A more important dimension of cultural diversity that has received scant attention is the diversification of the philosophical foundation of higher education. Although there appears to be considerable diversity in the knowledge base of higher education in the United States, the philosophical underpinnings of higher education are shaped primarily by one dominant worldview. That is, to the extent that a society's institutions of higher education reflect the predominant values found in that society, it is reasonable to assume that the predominant values undergirding the philosophical foundation of higher education in the United States are Eurocentric in nature. Eurocentric means that these values emanate exclusively from a European-American view of the world. Thus, by being Eurocentric, the philosophical base of higher education in the United States has become ethnocentric and uninclusive. This has resulted in the omission of worldviews of other ethnic groups found in the United States and, more specifically, in institutions of higher education. To diversify the philosophical foundation of higher education, alternative worldview or philosophical models' need to be consid-