On Ranking and Representation in the Geosciences

Abstract

While the merits of academic ranking are debatable, its benefits cannot be denied. Elite and highly ranked Geoscience programs have a duty to use these benefits to lead on equity. Unfortunately, they too are starkly underrepresented in faculty and scientists from historically excluded communities. A lack of scientists from historically excluded groups, who can serve as role models potentially alienates, and disincentivizes marginalized students and scientists, and further hinders geoscience progress in diversity. Best ranked institutions can disrupt the cycle of underrepresentation by using their stature and visibility to serve as role models for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Introduction

Despite decades of efforts at building equity in the Geosciences, including Earth, Ocean, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, at most US institutions, academic programs still lag in the representation of people with historically excluded identities such as gender, race and ethnicity (e.g., Ranganathan et al., 2021). This is likely due to low recruitment, low retention, and high attrition. These numbers remain extremely low for all marginalized and historically excluded groups, excepting white women. And, not surprising, our observation is that highly ranked geoscience institutions also lag far behind in representation of scientists from historically excluded groups (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Gender breakdown of geoscience staff members inferred from looking at publicly available information on websites from the 10 Best Global Universities for Geoscience reported by US News and World Report in January 2019 (These institutions are: University of Colorado—Boulder, California Institute of Technology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Columbia University, University of Washington, University of California—Berkeley, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, and Utrecht University). While inspection of websites for data is admittedly subjective, it is however representative of the experience of people investigating a school. The representation of women at highly ranked Geoscience institutions is significantly lower than the average percentage of female doctoral graduates in Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric sciences as shown in Bernard and Cooperdock (2018) that showed this average to be ∼40% (indicated by the horizontal line on the figure).

Highly ranked geoscience institutions, held up as examples of the best in the discipline, are mostly in the United States. According to the US News and World Report in 2019, of the 10 Best Global Universities for Geosciences, eight are in the United States, and two are in Europe. This ranking identifies programs as leaders in their discipline based on “their academic research performance and their global and regional reputation.” Ranking affords institutions and programs unparalleled bragging rights, visibility that brings more funding, global publicity, recruiters, and the ability to attract the best and most ambitious prospective students and researchers in the field. This creates a cumulated advantage, the “Mathew effect” (Merton, 1968), for scientists at highly ranked institutions, who get more credit compared to their peers at the lesser-known institutions, even when their work is similar. Regrettably, these ranking criteria do not document institutions' progress in diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Although ranking merits are debated, ranking is widely used to decide who is who in academic disciplines, where to educate students, where to donate money, and whom to invite for lectures and for collaborations. Consequently, highly ranked institutions can attract top students, scientists, and more funding that enables them to stay at the top. However, the benefits of high ranking may not be equally experienced by minoritized individuals hired at top institutions, and thus may further disincentivize scholars from groups not equitably represented.

How Minoritized Individuals Face Disincentives

Individuals from under-represented groups are mostly overlooked for selection into highly ranked institutions. Minoritized scientists in these highly ranked programs can be tokenized, under-mentored, and obstructed from accessing opportunities as befitting their positions. These experiences become the key reference for other aspiring scientists from historically excluded groups, who further become discouraged and disincentivized from seeking opportunities at the highly ranked institutions.

Therefore, if ignored, under-representation at highly ranked geoscience institutions, can contribute to significantly undermine initiatives by the broader geoscience community to address issues of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion—JEDI—and therefore, jeopardize efforts to recruit and retain geoscientists from historically excluded communities. JEDI initiatives will struggle to succeed if institutions that are perceived as flag bearers fail to be intentional and successful, to recruit and retain individuals from historically excluded groups.

Exclusionary Institutions Can Perpetuate Status Quo

A cycle of recruiting, training, and prioritizing the promotion of mostly white or white appearing men can create challenges in attracting individuals from historically excluded groups including white women, Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) that institutions seek to recruit. For example, status-quo can lead to:

1. Hindrance to joining: Applicants from historically excluded groups, who cannot see their path to success, assume a challenging and unwelcoming work environment and avoid institutions; homogenous hiring committees may, unconsciously, show exclusionary bias, and minoritized students may opt out of the discipline due of the lack of representation or role models.

2. Obstacle to success: Facing isolation and sense of not belonging in these programs, token minoritized faculty or staff will struggle with low morale and poor mental health, which in turn perpetuates stagnation.

3. Stagnation: Limited access to information and resources, isolation, and poor mentoring leads to lagging and stalled careers for the few individuals from historically excluded groups who may struggle to earn tenure, promotion or to attain full professorship. Consequently, the myth of marginalized individuals being unsuited for academia is perpetuated.

4. Limited social capital: Isolation leads to less opportunities to acquire valuable information, resources, and support from group members (e.g., Callahan et al., 2015) thus creating additional barriers to advancement.

5. One size fits all mentoring: fewer individuals from historically excluded groups means fewer role models at all levels. This lack of representation can lead to mentoring without awareness of identities and cultural experiences of mentees.

6. Less opportunities to tackle unconscious bias: Checking unconscious biases and discriminatory behavior is difficult, without the perspectives of members from marginalized groups who experience such biases.

7. Limited representation in leadership roles: Delays in professional advancement for minoritized individuals leads to underrepresentation at the top of academic, or other organizations.

8. Burden with service work: Increasing representation lessens the higher service loads required toward equity work—a task often relegated to individuals from historically excluded groups, and especially to women.

What Can Institutions Do?

Institutions can engage in meaningful initiatives to create accessible, inclusive, just, and equitable programs. For example, institutions can actively ensure that recruitment, followed by representation on their front facing websites does not perpetuate the stereotypes of only white or white appearing, and/or male role models for their discipline. They can seek external experts to examine and evaluate their diversity, equity, and inclusion—DEI—efforts; institutions can create tenure and promotion criteria that prominently include DEI service; and facilitate advocacy at all levels including at professional societies, agencies and industries that engage with the institution. Institutions can encourage and reward their faculty and staff to participate in programs such as ADVANCEGeo, URGE, CHANGE, Mentoring365, and other initiatives to create change, and actively increase outreach and relationships with historically excluded communities.

Conclusion

Best Global Universities for Geoscience earn their honor based on criteria that do not include diversity, equity or inclusion metrics. Given the inclusivity expectations of the wider community, of which Geosciences are a part, future academic rankings need to include JEDI performance metrics as a prime ranking indicator if they are to be equitable. And, highly ranked geoscience programs, as role models, have a duty to demonstrate best practices not only in research and education, but also in social responsibility toward all constituents.

Acknowledgments

The anonymous reviewers for their comments and feedback.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest relevant to this study.