Academic Disciplines of African-American College Faculty

A new report from the U.S. Department of Education finds that blacks make up 5.5 percent of all full-time instructional faculty at colleges and universities throughout the United States. Non-Hispanic whites are more than 80 percent of all college and university full-time faculty.

The report also offers data on the percentage of black faculty in certain academic disciplines. Blacks have their highest level of participation in the social sciences. Blacks are 7.6 percent of all full-time instructional faculty in the social sciences. The lowest level of black participation is in agriculture/home economics. Blacks are only 2.3 percent of the faculty in this area.

Blacks are only 3.6 percent of the faculty in the natural sciences and 4.7 percent of the engineering faculty.

Copyright © 2006. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.