I'm going to echo my previous comment elsewhere in the thread, when talking about diversity in HE, they're not just talking about BAME, gender, or religion, but

I'm going to echo my previous comment elsewhere in the thread, when talking about diversity in HE, they're not just talking about BAME, gender, or religion, but background. This is socioeconomic factors, this is high school value-add, this is location, this is previous family members attending an HE institution, this is performance in the face of adversity. Diversity isn't a box-ticking exercise to make the front of the brochure have different sorts of people on it, but recognising that there are a wealth of different barriers and paths to "equality of opportunity". To boil it down to "only the best people who are in the position to be best at it should be able to do it" completely ignores the fact that there are groups of people (through circumstance, or through no fault of their own birth) who would never have access to the same opportunity to succeed. To not only accept that, but to make some allowances (and in HE, the amount we're talking about is exceptionally minor in the vast majority of cases) so that outweighted performance proportional to background (contextual) rather than absolute performance is the factor you're looking at to consider giving someone the opportunity, seems innately fair to me.