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JBHE surveyed the nation s highest-ranked research universities, the most selective liberal arts colleges, and the 50 flagship state universities to determine their levels of black faculty. Overall, the liberal arts colleges have the most racially diverse faculties. Mount Holyoke College had the highest percentage of black faculty of any of the 100 colleges and universities surveyed.
NATIONWIDE, JUST over 5 percent of all full-time faculty members at colleges and universities in the United States are black. This percentage has increased slightly over the past decade. But the percentage of black faculty at almost all the nation's high-ranking universities is significantly below the national average of 5.2 percent.
JBHE recently surveyed the nation's highest-ranked universities to determine the number and percentage of blacks on their faculties. We received responses from 26 highranking universities. MIT and CalTech declined to provide updated data on their black faculty.*
This Year's Results
Of the 26 high-ranking universities that responded to our survey this year, blacks made up more than 5 percent of the total full-time faculty at only five institutions. Emory University in Atlanta has the highest percentage of black faculty at 6.8 percent.
In both our 2005 and 2002 surveys, Columbia University had the highest percentage of black faculty. This year, Columbia drops to second place. At Columbia, 214 of the 3,477 faculty members are black. But it must be noted that a large majority of Columbia's black faculty members are in its graduate and professional schools. After conducting our earlier survey, Columbia professor Manning Marable advised JBHE that of the 400 professors with tenure at the Columbia College of Arts and Sciences, only five were black.
The 279 black faculty members at the University of North Carolina made up 5.9 percent of the full-time faculty, the third-highest level in our survey. In total numbers, Chapel Hill had the most black faculty members.
At the University of Michigan, there are 145 black fulltime faculty. They make up 5.4 percent of the full-time faculty on the Ann Arbor campus. Brown University is the only other high-ranking research university where blacks are at least 5 percent of the total full-time faculty.
At 21 of the 26 universities that responded to our survey, the black percentage of...