Faculty are slowly becoming more racially and ethnically diverse – but not nearly as diverse as their students, a new Pew Research Center study found.
More than three-quarters of faculty are White compared to 55 percent of students, according to fall 2017 data from the National Center for Education Statistics. From 1997 to 2017, the number of minority students climbed by 17 percent while faculty diversity rose 10 percent.
Progress for Black and Latinx faculty has been particularly sluggish, with their percentages rising only minimally over the course of a decade. Since 1997, the number of Latinx faculty jumped by 2 percent, and for Black faculty, only 1 percent.
The study also found that only 6 percent of faculty are Black compared to 14 percent of students. For Latinx faculty, the disparity is even wider. A fifth of the U.S. student population is now Latinx versus only 5 percent of professors.
This diversity gap has consequences for student learning. Research on elementary school and middle school students has found that students of color are more motivated and have loftier goals for college when their teachers look like them.
An American Economic Association study found similar results on community college campuses: Performance gaps between minority students and their peers – in terms of dropout rates and grades – fell by 20 to 50 percent when they were taught by minority professors.
Racial, ethnic and gender gaps between faculty and students span across disciplines, according to National Center for Education Statistics data. But 2017 research showed faculty diversity falls particularly low in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) at the top 40 public universities.
