For many faculty, particularly those who favor research over
teaching, securing a faculty position at a major research institution
is a dream come true. These universities, of which there are 120
nationwide, offer some of the most ideal conditions available for the
pursuit of scholarly and scientific research.
Research institutions employ roughly one quarter of the faculty
working at four-year institutions and produce roughly three-quarters of
all Ph.D. scholars. They produce 61 percent of all African American
doctorates and 76 percent of all Latino doctorates. Nevertheless,
African American and Latino faculty, particularly those with tenure or
on a tenure track, continue to be scarce at research institutions.
African American and Latino scholars, of which there are 5,278 and
3,318 respectively at research institutions, constitute only 5.2
percent of the 163,548 faculty at these universities. Among faculty
with tenure (119,838), only 2.9 percent are African American (3,479),
and 1.9 percent (2,326) are Latino.
This issue’s BI The Numbers analysis, which is based upon data
collected by the U.S. Department of Education, paints a detailed
portrait of where African American and Latino scholars are within the
nation’s research institutions. It also offers insights on how these
schools are performing in relationship to one another with respect to
minority faculty recruitment and retention.
The BI Faculty Ranking of research institutions is based upon the
number of tenure/tenure-track Black and Latino faculty on each campus.
While some institutions may have a higher aggregate number of African
American of Latino faculty, tenure-related statistics indicate a deeper
commitment to faculty diversity.
The analysis included only Research I and II institutions, and
omits all nine of the University of California institutions as well as
the University of Hawaii-Manoa, the University of Kansas-Main Campus,
Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for
which faculty demographic data were either incomplete or missing.
Howard, University of New Mexico In the Lead
