A new report from The Education Trust finds that faculty diversity plays a key role in college student completion rates. It can also have a major impact on students’ sense of belonging, retention rates, and persistence. All students benefit from faculty diversity. Engaging with diverse faculty and different perspectives builds empathy, respect for others, and creativity, and improves problem-solving skills. Black students, who are pursuing college degrees in greater numbers, are more likely to graduate when they have diverse faculty members who look like them and can serve as positive mentors and role models.
Researchers compared the Black percentage of the student body to the Black percentage of faculty at a large number of state-operated universities. They found that only 13.4 percent of these educational institutions had a Black-faculty-to-Black-student ratio of 90 percent or more. More than 70 percent of these institutions had a Black-faculty-to-Black-student ratio of below 70 percent.
The report also provides data on new hires and whether Black faculty are more or less likely to be hired to tenure-track positions or adjunct positions. The report compares the percentage of all faculty who have tenure to the percentage of Black faculty who have tenure. Finally, the report looks at progress in hiring of Black faculty between 2005 and 2020.
The full report, So Why Are University Faculties So White? Faculty Diversity and Student Success Go Hand in Hand, may be downloaded here.
All (black) students do not benefit from diversity, and the main criteria for faculty hires should be academic achievement, intellectual merit, technical skills and teaching ability, not a diversity score. My problem solving skills do not increase if I learn calculus from a black or Asian instructor. I should not need “a sense of belonging” to keep me engaged as a student. This type of thinking is severely eroding the quality of our universities — even Harvard is shopping for faculty and appointing top administrators based primarily on their race, gender, and sexual orientation. Disgraceful. Let us try to keep America strong instead of hastening her decline, because China is not our friend.
Hey Ohenewa,
Your misguided and neocolonial comment is indicative of years of miseducation. First, you’re not academically, intellectually, politically, or “culturally” qualified to speak on any higher education issues concerning native born Black Americans. Second, you come from another Third World African country or Caribbean island which simply mean that you and your family are JUST GLAD to be in the USA. Third, why did you flee your country? Take your sub-par talents and skills a rebuild your “corrupt, lack of infrastructure, widespread crime and health issues” country. Fourth, you need to tell your corrupt politicians to stop selling their country off to China for pennies and decades long leases all the while the local African is starving. In close, your ignorance of White American racism is downright shameful. I think you’re just enthralled with Western Whiteness.
I may be a foreign-born African-American, but there are many prominent native-born African-Americans who would probably support the views I have expressed. Glenn Loury, Coleman Hughes, and John McWhorter come to mind. You should check them out when you have some time on your hands.
The ungodly Diversity, Equity and Inclusion movement is antithetical to academic excellence and high standards, and exacerbates many of our most critical socio-economic problems, such as the unraveling of the macroeconomy and the mass invasions by “refugees” occurring on the Southern Border with Mexico. If America collapses, there will be little benefit to being “equal”.