The Racial Gap in Dental School Faculty Is Hard to Swallow

Recently, JBHE reported the huge racial gap in dental school enrollments. In the 2009-10 academic year, blacks were 5.7 percent of all dental school enrollments. This is less than one half the level that would apply if racial parity were to prevail.

Now we turn our attention to blacks as faculty in U.S. dental schools. During the 2007-08 year, there were 324 African Americans employed as dental/clinical science faculty at U.S. dental schools. They made up only 3.4 percent of all dental school faculty.

In the entire country, there were 42 tenured African-American faculty members in U.S. dental schools. There were only nine tenured African-American women faculty with tenure.

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