Increasing Faculty Diversity: The Occupational Choices of High-Achieving Minority Students

Academe, Nov/Dec 2003 by Smith, Daryl G

Increasing Faculty Diversity: The Occupational Choices of High-Achieving Minority Students Stephen Cole and Elinor Barber. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003

Even before Increasing Faculty Diversity: The Occupational Choices of High-Achieving Minority Students was available to the public, it was making newspaper headlines. But the headlines, such as those claiming that affirmative action has had a negative impact or absolving institutions from responsibility for diversifying their faculties, were often based on assumptions made by the book's authors, researchers Stephen Cole and Elinor Barber, about faculty hiring practices and not on the study's empirical findings. In fact, Cole and Barber did not gather data on faculty hiring practices.

What the book does offer is a strong set of data from undergraduates. With funding from major foundations, including the Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation, Cole and Barber set out to address the long-term issue of increasing faculty diversity by looking at the academic aspirations of high-achieving undergraduate students, especially underrepresented students of color, and the factors that influence such aspirations-an urgent and worthwhile project that raised important issues and led to some powerful findings.

Assuming that the number of faculty of color is so low because few students of color are interested in faculty careers, the authors wondered what might be done to increase student interest. To find out, they sent surveys to all seniors graduating in the arts and sciences at the eight Ivy League institutions and thirteen selective liberal arts colleges, and to high-achieving seniors at what they termed "less selective institutions." At these institutions, which included nine public research universities and four historically black colleges and universities, seniors with grade point averages of 2.8 or higher were surveyed. Several of the public universities were selected because they had relatively large numbers of Latino or African American graduates in the arts and sciences. Cole and Barber knew that the lack of diversity in the Ivies would not provide enough students of color for them to draw conclusions, and wondered whether there would be greater "fit" at less selective institutions. With return rates above 70 percent, the final sample included over 7,500 students.

Contrary to a widespread assumption, the authors found no ethnic differences in interest in faculty careers. Students of color are as interested as and, in a few contexts, more interested than, white students in faculty careers. Moreover, among Asian American students the authors found an interest in academic careers in a broad range of areas, not just in the sciences, as many assume.

In addition to initial career interests, the book emphasizes the significance of grades, faculty contact, role models, funded programs for aspiring academics targeted at students of color, and institutional climate as important factors influencing career aspirations. The study also showed that historically black colleges and universities are successful relative to other institutions in terms of student performance, likelihood of students pursuing graduate school immediately after college, and the academic aspirations of their African American students.

The authors rightly suggest that because the absolute numbers of students of color are so low, the profile of faculty diversity will not change dramatically unless a greater proportion choose academic careers. Although grade point average is only one predictor of continuing interest in an academic career, the authors pay particular attention to the fact that African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latinos underperform at the highly selective Ivy League institutions, while underperformance is less of a problem at the "less selective" campuses in the study. But the authors' conclusion that students might be better served at "less selective predominantly white campuses" (to which they could presumably be admitted without special consideration) can hardly be drawn through the data here. It is puzzling, to say the least, that the authors use the public universities in the study, which include such elite flagship institutions as the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Wisconsin to make an argument against affirmative action. These institutions certainly employed affirmative action during the time period of this study, and, indeed, some are at the center of the national debate about and legal challenges to affirmative action. In fact, the data seem to lend support for the affirmative action policies of these public research institutions, and UCLA and the University of Texas are lauded by the authors for their high numbers of high-performing Latino graduates. Underperformance, particularly for talented African American students, is a matter requiring attention. The authors' review of many issues related to underperformance leads them to point to institutional effectiveness and context as important factors in determining student performance such as grades and to conclude that more research is needed.