A Large Racial Gap Persists in Faculty Posts in American Higher Education

In 2009, the latest year complete data is available, there were 728,977 full-time instructional faculty at degree-granting institutions in the United States. Of these, 39,715, or 5.4 percent, were Black. This data includes faculty at the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities. Therefore, the Black percentage of the faculty at predominantly White institutions is undoubtedly significantly lower.

The racial gap in faculty posts is most pronounced at the full professor level. In 2009, there were 177,581 full professors at degree-granting institutions. There were 6,086 Blacks in full professor posts. Thus, Blacks made up only 3.4 percent of all full professors.

There were 148,989 associate professors in 2009. The 8,163 Black associate professors made up 5.4 percent of all faculty at this rank.

Blacks were 6.4 percent of the assistant professors and 7.5 percent of the instructors.

Related Articles

4 COMMENTS

  1. I am a full prof at the University of Tampa, which was founded in 1931 and since c. 1990 tripled in size, from small college to medium size university, with over 6 thousand full-time students in 2011-12.

    UT has never had one single tenured black faculty member.

  2. The numbers are disappointing and are even more so if we look at full time faculty by disciplines. That is the number of blacks faculty in business and engineering disciplines. I teach finance and economics and find just a few blacks at the conferences that I attend.

Leave a Reply

Get the JBHE Weekly Bulletin

Receive our weekly email newsletter delivered to your inbox

Latest News

Oakwood University Wins 2024 Honda Campus All-Star Challenge

The Honda All-Star Challenge is an annual academic competition for students and faculty at historically Black colleges and universities. This year's top finisher, Oakwood University, received a $100,000 grant for their win.

Eight Black Scholars Appointed to New Faculty Positions

Here is this week’s roundup of African Americans who have been appointed to new faculty positions at colleges and universities throughout the United States. If you have news for our appointments section, please email the information to contact@jbhe.com.

MIT Launches HBCU Science Journalism Fellowship

The new HBCU Science Journalism Fellowship will provide students from Howard University, Hampton University, Florida A&M University, Morgan State University, and North Carolina A&T State University with hands-on training and individualized mentorship to develop their journalistic skills.

Two Black Scholars Named American Economic Association Distinguished Fellows

The American Economic Association has named William Darity Jr. and Margaret Simms as 2024 Distinguished Fellows in recognition of their prominent careers in advancing the field of economics and advocating for economic equality.

Featured Jobs