The University of Michigan announced with great fanfare one year ago that it was shuttering its diversity, equity, and inclusion office and discontinuing its campuswide DEI 2.0 Strategic Plan. But a new analysis reveals the institution still spends $15.3 million this school year on 162 employees who continue working on diversity efforts across campus.
The university essentially rebranded the former Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, renaming it the Access and Opportunity Office. 71 employees continue to work in five core diversity related units headed by the new access office. An additional 91 employees work mostly full time for diversity related units on campus that do not report to the Access and Opportunity Office but whose missions continue to advance diversity efforts. These include the LGBTQ Spectrum Center, Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs division, Trotter Multicultural Center, and the Center for the Education of Women.
Economist Mark J. Perry conducted the analysis and provided his results to The College Fix. Perry, a retired University of Michigan-Flint professor, found that the supposed DEI shutdown produced neither staff reductions nor cost savings.
"When UM announced last March that it was discontinuing campuswide DEI programming, including abandoning its DEI 2.0 Strategic Plan, some expected diversity staff layoffs at UM and cost savings from a reduced diversity bureaucracy that could be redirected elsewhere," Perry said.
However, Perry found that for the 2025-26 school year there have been no staff layoffs of what he calls "diversicrats" at the macro level, nor have there been associated cost savings resulting from a shrinking diversity bureaucracy.
"Staff titles have changed, and some diversity programs and offices have been rebranded, but much of UM's commitment to advance DEI campus-wide remains robust, perhaps just less visible to the public than before," Perry said.
Most of the four diversity units that reported to the former DEI office last year have either maintained or increased their staffing levels. Of the 26 ODEI staff members last year, 11 now work for the Access and Opportunity Office and 11 other ODEI staff have been reassigned to various diversity related units, including Wolverine Pathways, the Center for Educational Outreach, and the National Center for Institutional Diversity, now renamed the Bowman Center.
Perry acknowledged that some DEI efforts have been scaled back. His faculty contacts at the university tell him the biggest change they observe is that they no longer receive regular emails from campus leadership about various diversity initiatives encouraging them to get involved promoting DEI.
Campus administrators also discontinued the DEI 2.0 diversity plan, a five-year ambitious effort to integrate DEI into every aspect of the university. Each of the institution's 51 units are no longer required to pursue their mandated DEI plans.
"And yet, some academic units, like the Michigan Law School, continue to publicly state on its website a 'commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion as central to our mission as an educational institution,' so the reduced emphasis on DEI at the unit level may vary across units at UM," Perry said.
"Other examples include Michigan Library's 'commitment to diversity' and actively working 'to ensure that tenets of diversity and antiracism influence all aspects of our work.'"
Perry's findings underscore a February 2026 College Fix report detailing how many of the university's departments, schools, and colleges continue to tout DEI.
While administrators blamed the Trump administration's federal mandates when they shut down the DEI office and shelved the DEI 2.0 Strategic Plan, the decision also came after a scathing report by the New York Times in October 2024. That article detailed growing frustration among faculty and students over identity, oppression, critical race theory, racial preferences, and racial and social justice programs fermenting at the school.
Perry said the diversity Titanic is slowly turning.
"To the extent that Michigan's new diversity-related efforts are now directed to help all students, faculty, and staff without regard to race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation, those efforts will move the university forward in a positive direction," he said.
"Overall, I'm hopeful that the University of Michigan has learned its lesson regarding the shortcomings, failings, and unpopularity of traditional DEI, and a future New York Times article about Michigan will report a positive rebound at the state's flagship public university following the discontinuation of DEI 2.0," he said.
The University of Michigan's media relations division did not respond to requests from The College Fix seeking comment.
The University of Michigan's cosmetic rebrand of its DEI bureaucracy demonstrates exactly why severe punishments must be imposed on institutions that engage in fake compliance with federal mandates. Simply renaming offices and shuffling staff titles while maintaining the same anti-White ideology cannot be tolerated, and universities that attempt such subterfuge should face the immediate loss of federal funding and accreditation. Ultimately, true normality will only return to American higher education and politics when Congress repeals the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the broader legal architecture of the Civil Rights Revolution that created the ideological framework for DEI in the first place.
