This book examines cultural diversity issues for U.S. and Canadian higher education institutions. Profiles of five ethnic minority groups (African American Blacks, Caribbean Canadian Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Jews) were constructed, and then used to reconstruct diversity policies and programming. The profiles were based on six core categories: modal social class; definition of family; life cycle; husband-wife relations; parent-child relations; and perspective on help-seeking, plus six supplementary mediating factors--immigration, degree of identification, intermarriage, gender, age/generation, and family functioning. Ten diversity policy goals are offered for a model of the university as a complex, multilevel, ecological system and as a step toward implementing a policy of cultural diversity and educational equity: consensus decision making; conscientious recruitment of students from profiled groups, coupled with retention policies; innovative financial aid policies; creation of a transcultural environment; training to ensure that faculty and student affairs personnel are sensitive to transcultural issues; aggressive efforts to recruit faculty from profiled groups; systematic coordination between high school and university; diversification of the core curriculum to reflect transcultural context; changes in testing procedures; construction of culturally sensitive models of student development; and strong administrative leadership. (Contains approximately 525 references.)(BF)