In academia, earning tenure is a significant milestone for faculty members that protects their freedom of speech when pursuing their academic interests and grants them an indefinite teaching appointment. According to a new study led by the University of Houston, Black and Hispanic junior faculty often receive biased decisions when seeking promotion and tenure at their universities, resulting in unfair career setbacks not experienced by other groups.
The authors examined data on the promotion and tenure decisions of 1,571 faculty members at five universities in the United States from 2015 to 2022. On average, their analysis revealed that Black and Hispanic faculty received 7 percent more negative votes and were 44 percent less likely to receive unanimous approval votes from their promotion committees.
Furthermore, the study revealed a double standard in how scholarly publications are rewarded. The authors found that Black and Hispanic faculty members with below-average h-indexes (a measurement of how productive an academic is based on often they are cited) were judged more harshly than their peers from other backgrounds with similar productivity levels. This finding was more pronounced among Black and Hispanic women junior professors.
The authors conclude that their findings can partially explain the persistent underrepresentation of faculty of color at American universities. They stress that unfair decision making in promotion and tenure processes needs to be addressed in order to improve diversity in academia going forward.
In addition to the University of Houston, the research team included scholars from the University of California, Merced, Texas Southern University, Texas A&M University, and Louisiana State University.
