Comparing Numbers of Black Faculty at Flagship State Universities to the Black Population of Particular States

In last week’s issue, JBHE reported that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill leads all flagship state universities in the total number of black faculty as well as the percentage of all faculty who are black. But when one considers the fact that more than 21 percent of the population of the state of North Carolina is black, an African-American faculty of 5.9 percent is not an extraordinary accomplishment.

Therefore, a far more useful ranking of the flagship state universities is to compare their percentage of black faculty to the percentage of blacks in the population, and thus the work force of a given state.

Under this ranking system, the University of North Carolina is near the bottom of the list, not the top. There are five state flagship universities at which the percentage of black faculty is greater than the percentage of the black population in the state. All of these five states have small black populations. They are Vermont, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Utah. At the University of Idaho, blacks make up 1 percent of the faculty, the exact percentage of blacks in the state’s population.

Among the states with a significant black population of greater than 5 percent, the University of Massachusetts ranks the highest when we compare the level of black faculty to the black population of the state. Blacks make up 4.5 percent of the faculty at UMass whereas blacks are 6.9 percent of the state’s population.

Among the southern and border states, Kentucky has the most favorable ratio of black faculty at its state flagship university to the black population of the state. Louisiana State University ranks at the bottom among the southern states. In a state where the black population exceeds 33 percent of the total, only 3.4 percent of the faculty at LSU is black.

Copyright © 2007. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.