Survey: North Carolina A&T, Howard schools of business leading in faculty diversity

By Shalina Chatlani

Education Dive, August 30, 2017 —

Dive Brief:

• In a survey of diversity in institutional faculty, the PhD Project, a program geared toward diverse management, found that North Carolina A&T State University had the greatest number of African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans and Native Americans in faculty, while Rutgers had the most across all majority-serving institutions in the 2016-17 academic year.
• The top five institutions for the numbers of the aforementioned underrepresented groups, including NC A&T University with 22 on staff, were Howard University with 19, Florida A&M University with 15, Rutgers with 14, and Morgan State University with 13.
• PhD Project President Bernard Milano noted that he was happy to see the number of underrepresented minorities increase, but added “there is still a long way to go” as efforts to increase minority faculty hiring university-wide “may increase faculty diversity at the individual colleges, but they do not enlarge the pie for all.”

Image credit: Getty Images

Dive Insight:

The PhD Project’s recent survey highlights that underrepresented minorities within faculty are increasing, but they are still primarily located in minority-serving institutions — though the inclusion of majority-serving institutions like Rutgers, DePaul University, and the University of Texas at Austin in the top 10 shows promise. And as Milano points out, this means there is still a lot of work to be done on not only increasing, but maintaining faculty diversity overall.

As more students come to campus with increasingly unique racial and economic backgrounds, it’s important for higher education leaders to consider the role of faculty on campus in creating not only an inclusive space, but attracting and retaining those students. And though research suggests this emphasis is growing on campuses, the statistics still show that minority representation in faculty is still lacking.

For example, a Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America report entitled “Taking the measure of faculty diversity” from last year broke down the overall 64% increase in total full and part-time faculty at colleges and universities between 1993 and 2013. It ultimately found that white faculty increased by more than 40% over the surveyed period, while Asian-American and a combination of black and Hispanic faculty grew by 170% and 143%.

But significantly, only 10% of the nation’s total tenure positions are held by racial and ethnic minorities, according to the report, which suggests that while diversity in faculty may be increasing superficially, minority faculty members still don’t have as much job security across all institutions and may feel compelled to stay at minority-serving institutions.