Employment Status of African Americans With Ph.D.s in Science and Engineering

A new report from the National Science Foundation reveals that there are 214,000 faculty members at U.S. colleges and universities who have Ph.D.s in science (including social sciences) and engineering fields. Of these, 4 percent are black. About 28 percent of all black faculty holding a Ph.D. in science and engineering fields are employed by historically black colleges and universities. The HBCUs employ about 2 percent of all faculty nationwide.

Blacks with Ph.D.s in these fields are more likely than whites to be employed by an educational institution. Some 60 percent of blacks with Ph.D.s in the sciences or engineering are academics, compared to 49 percent of whites holding doctorates in these fields.

Copyright © 2006. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.