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Why the Shortage of Black Professors?.
Faculties at American institutions of higher education have become convinced that a broadly based and diverse student body will produce superior education, but the same concept seldom occurs to faculty when viewing themselves.
Here, leading scholars, educational administrators, and social commentators express their views on why blacks are vastly underrepresented on the faculties of American institutions of higher education.
THREE DECADES AFTER the enactment of equal employment opportunity legislation, blacks still make up a tiny percentage of the faculties of American higher educational institutions. Despite strong affirmative-action plans instituted by many colleges and universities during the 1960s and 1970s, the percentage of black faculty has changed very little in recent years. In many of the nation's most prestigious colleges and universities, there has been little or no progress in 20 years. Since about half of all black faculty teach at historically black colleges and universities, the odds that a student will see a black face at the front of the classroom at the thousands of predominantly white institutions are about 50 to 1.
The editors of The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education asked a select group of scholars and commentators for their opinions as to why there are so few blacks teaching at colleges and universities in the United States. Also, we asked the following questions:
- To what extent are black professors still subject to discrimination in hiring and promotion decisions?
- Are hiring and tenure decisions still controlled by people who feel that blacks do not have the capacity to teach or do serious research in traditional academic subjects?
- Are affirmative-action programs flagging?
- Why do so few blacks choose to pursue careers in higher education?
- How is the situation to be remedied?
We received the following replies:
Slack Enforcement
Reginald Wilson is a senior scholar at the American Council on Education (ACE), a Washington, D.C.-based research association. Before coming to Washington to start the ACE's Office of Minority Concerns, Wilson was the president of Wayne State University in Detroit from 1971 to 1981. Earlier, Wilson taught graduate courses in psychology and black studies at Wayne State, University of Detroit, and the University of Michigan. Wilson is the recipient of the Anthony Wayne Award...