Black Faculty at the High-Ranking Liberal Arts Colleges

Last week JBHE reported the results of its survey of black faculty at the nation’s highest-ranked research universities. The survey shows that blacks make up at least 5 percent of the total full-time faculty at only five of the 30 highest-ranked universities.

The nation’s most highly selective liberal arts colleges have a far superior record in hiring black faculty than the nation’s most prestigious research universities. Of the 24 high-ranking liberal arts colleges responding to our survey, nine had black faculty levels of 5 percent or more.

Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts has 18 black faculty members. They make up nearly 10 percent of the college’s entire full-time faculty. Haverford College, which led our previous survey, ranked second with a faculty that is 8.6 percent black.  At Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, blacks are nearly 7 percent of the total faculty.

Bowdoin College and Harvey Mudd College each had only one black faculty member. Claremont McKenna College, which is the only highly selective liberal arts institution to decline to participate in this year’s survey, had two blacks on its 126-member faculty in 2005.

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