Because when forming teams of people, their total merit is usually not the sum of individuals merits. I do not work in the field, but I can easily find papers (

Because when forming teams of people, their total merit is usually not the sum of individuals merits. I do not work in the field, but I can easily find papers (like https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212567114001786 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221256711... which says it has a positive impact or http://ftp.iza.org/dp6973.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp6973.pdf which says it has a negative one) saying diversity by itself directly impacts productivity in companies, and I don't think it's too stretched to think it also impacts the growth of students. So, I can see why a university, depending on which studies it's basing its decisions upon, would want to directly work on the diversity of its students, in order to improve the quality of the global education its giving (I don't think one need studies to be convinced that your education depend both on professors and fellow students, among other things). Whether it's a good decision or not to increase diversity, I wouldn't judge rationally (even though my gut would say it's good, based on something like "mono genes crops die but wild crops live" things...), but it's certainly an impactful one !