Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2005 > December > 04 > Entry
A lack of black faculty
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education today says it will take 100 years for the percentage of black faculty at top colleges to equal the percentage of blacks in the overall workforce.
Here’s the lead of the story:
In all but a few cases, the nation’s highest-ranked colleges have made only slight progress in increasing the percentage of blacks on their faculties. At the current rate of improvement, it will be a century or more before the black percentages of the faculties of these institutions mirror the black percentage of the American work force.
Nationwide, just over 5 percent of all full-time faculty members at colleges and universities in the United States are black. This percentage has increased slightly over the past decade.
But the percentage of black faculty at almost all the nation’s high-ranking universities is significantly below the national average.
JBHE recently surveyed the nation’s 30 highest-ranked universities to determine the number and percentage of blacks on their faculties. We received responses from 28 high-ranking universities. Tufts University and the University of Southern California declined to provide statistics to the JBHE research department.
Top five on their list were Columbia, North Carolina, Emory, Michigan and Wake Forest. Bottom Five were Chicago, Notre Dame, Cal-Berkeley, Rice and Cal Tech.
I was talking about this problem with a good friend who is a college professor. He says in many cases it’s not that colleges don’t want black faculty. While some schools are doing a rotten job at hiring diverse faculties, many are desperately looking to hire people of color. He believes the bigger problem is on a supply side. Not enough blacks are getting PhDs and coming out into the job market.
He says you can solve this problem at the bottom, finding ways to send more blacks first to college and then to graduate school. What do you think?
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Colleges and Universities
Comments
By Joseph Smith
December 17, 2005 4:57 PM | Link to this
A very friendly site. Have a nice day!By Jonathan Jones
December 17, 2005 1:29 PM | Link to this
Cool stuff. Keep up the good work.By Rick
December 6, 2005 7:34 AM | Link to this
The percentage of blacks in the nation, or the number of black faculty in all colleges are irrelevant statistics to the issue of what should the percentage be in the elite schools. A better gauge would be to compare it with the percentage of blacks receiving PhDs from elite schools.By Mary
December 4, 2005 10:29 AM | Link to this
This reminds me of all the articles about the lack of black coaches in colleges and the professional sports despite the numbers of black athletes. I read one recently about the increase in black college quarterbacks, but we still do not have black coaches. Colleges do a much more intense recruiting for black (and white) athletes than black (and white)students, so we should not be surprised there is an absence of black (or white) students with PhDs in anything. I attended the 2003 OSU graduation at the Horsehoe. A major portion of the students receiving PHDs in science and engineering were not even from this country. We have a basic education attitude about academics, period, that cuts across the races. Start giving gifted black and white students the recruiting intensity and fat scholarship offers currently given only to athletes. Why does anyone wonder about this situation? What do we expect?