Diversify Faculties, But How?

Image from and available at Inside Higher Ed

The protests that have occurred on college campuses this semester have included demands that institutional leaders take steps to create environments that are more sensitive to the needs of students from various racial and ethnic backgrounds.  In recent weeks, some of these demands have grown in number and complexity; some to the point of making students the targets of criticism if not derision.  One demand, however, seem consistent from one institution to the next – that faculty reach particular racial percentages within a specified period of time.  The University of Louisville’s President made such a commitment in the wake of an ethnic offense of his own making.  Similarly Brown announced recently that it would double the number of its faculty from previously underrepresented groups by the 2024-25 academic year.  Such commitments are laudable and other higher education institutions likely will make similar pledges if they have not already done so.  Yet, I am left to wonder from where are eligible faculty candidates to fill all of these new opportunities supposed to come given the historically short supply of qualified candidates.

The National Council for Educational Statistics reports that African Americans represent only 7.4 percent of the PhD’s awarded in 2010.  That number is only slightly better than the previous 10 years, when African Americans represented only 6.6 percent of awarded PhD’s.  The news is similar for Hispanics and Latinos who account for 5.8 percent of awarded PhD’s in 2010, which is only slightly better than the 4.7 percent figure from the previous decade ago.  These percentages remained essentially flat despite the fact that, according to the NCES, “the number of doctor's degrees awarded increased by 60 percent for Hispanic students and by 47 percent for Black students” from 2000 to 2010.

I think it is admirable that universities are committed to reaching particular percentages of black or Hispanic faculty by certain dates, but it seems to me that they all are going to be beating the same bushes to find only a few eligible candidates.  In responding to student demands to diversify faculties, some institutions have highlighted the problem of the so-called leaky pipeline of minority students from undergraduate to graduate school.  That is, many of these students do not contemplate academic careers as undergraduates and thus do not pursue post-baccalaureate education.  Some colleges and universities have made promises to try to fix the leaky pipeline, but that ignores a more fundamental problem of getting minority students to college in the first place.

In my home state of Illinois, blacks and African Americans are 17.5 percent of the school-aged student population while Hispanics and Latinos are 25.1 percent.  In the meantime, the University of Illinois, the state’s flagship public university, reports  that out of its current overall student population, 4.9 percent are African American while 8.1 percent Hispanic.  Admittedly this is not an according to Hoyle scientific statistical analysis, but I think it suggests a larger yet relevant issue, namely students need to succeed academically in their K-through-12 education in order to matriculate in and graduate from college before they can begin a graduate school program or contemplate a career as an academic scholar.

Colleges and universities are going to have to start facing some harsh realities about where future academics come from if they are serious about diversifying their faculties.  A more holistic approach that includes improving K-through-12 education that involves institutions of higher education is needed, otherwise any efforts toward faculty diversification will be little more than window-dressing that helps none of the populations colleges are trying to serve.