Rates of underrepresented faculty in higher education have not been keeping up with the increasingly diversifying student demographics, according to a new report from the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB).
The findings come from SREB’s 16 state profiles and regional and federal data from the 2017-18 academic year. The profiles were assembled by SREB program specialist Hannah Bartlebaugh and Dr. Ansley Abraham, founding director of the SREB Doctoral Scholars Program.
SREB’s 16 states include Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.
Among the two- and four-year colleges and universities, both public and private in the 16 states, 39.1% of undergrads were Black, Hispanic, American Indian or Alaska Native. Only 17.5% of the faculty were from these demographics.
Using data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) which is part of the federal National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the profiles “really looks at the demographics of students, faculty and doctoral degrees granted for four-year institutions, really looking at, ‘Okay, as we see that the student population, particularly the undergraduate student population, has been diversifying, what does faculty diversity looking like? Is it matching pace with those trends in increasing diversity?” said Bartlebaugh.
“I would say all states have room for improvement here,” Bartlebaugh said. “There’s no one that doesn’t have a gap in representation. So yeah, I would say, across the board, there’s room for improvement there.”
While only 55.9% of undergraduates are White in the region’s public four-year institutions, 74.9% of full- and part-time faculty members are White, according to the report.
