Why Are 90 Percent of College Faculty Still White?
By Pauline E. Kayes and Yvonne Singley
Harvard University announced a $50-million initiative in May to make faculty more diverse. Three months later, Columbia University followed suit, pledging $15 million to “jump start a new recruitment campaign and to accelerate other ongoing efforts to diversify faculty.” Those are two high-profile commitments, but in the last 10 years many other colleges and universities have jumped on the diversity bandwagon, creating a variety of programs and strategies to increase the number of faculty of color in predominantly White institutions. In spite of these efforts, however, the statistics show little progress in the diversification of faculty. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 90 percent of full-time faculty members are White.
“Efforts to diversify the faculty continue to be amongst the least successful elements of campus commitments to diversity,” writes
Caroline Turner in Diversifying Faculty: A Guidebook for Search Committees.
With a large number of faculty retirements expected in the coming years, many higher education administrators are scrambling to fill the void with minority faculty. The mission becomes more pressing as the gap between a multicultural student body and a homogenous faculty has become more of an educational, social and political problem. To complicate matters further, the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger Supreme Court decision on the use of race in admissions by the University of Michigan has caused many institutions to tread lightly lest they be singled out for legal reprisal.
There are some common myths and assumptions about diversity hiring that set up such initiatives and processes for failure. One assumption is that if the president, dean, provost, chancellor, department chair, human resources officer and trustees publicly declare their support for diverse hiring, then it will be actualized in the search and hiring process.
