A new study from Baylor University has found that universities that have hired chief diversity officers do not necessarily see an increase in the diversity of their faculty. The study collected race and ethnicity data from chief diversity officer, faculty, and administrator hiring records from 2001-2016 at research and master’s degree institutions that had at least 4,000 students.
The researches wrote that “we are unable to find significant statistical evidence that preexisting growth in diversity for underrepresented racial/ethnic minority groups is affected by the hiring of an executive level diversity officer for new tenure and non-tenure track hires, faculty hired with tenure, or for university administrator hires.” They concluded that even though there has been significant progress made in faculty diversity since 2001, the presence of a chief diversity officer does not appear to be a significant contributor to this progress.
The full paper, entitled “The Impact of Chief Diversity Officers on Diverse Faculty Hiring,” was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research can be accessed here.
