By Teresa Wantanabe ~ LA Times ~ March 8, 2018
California’s public colleges and universities face a “drastic disparity” in diversity between their undergraduates, who are overwhelmingly students of color, and their predominantly white faculty and campus leaders, a new study has found.
That mismatch can negatively affect student academic success and must be addressed, says the report by the Campaign for College Opportunity, a Los Angeles nonprofit.
“Our public colleges and universities have to do more than communicate that they ‘value’ diversity while tolerating its absence,” Michele Siqueiros, the nonprofit’s president, said in a statement. “We can no longer accept excuses that leave out African Americans, Latinx, Asians and women from faculty and leadership positions in our colleges and universities, especially when we know including them on our campuses is key to our students’ success.”
The report was issued Tuesday on the 50th anniversary of the East Los Angeles walkouts in which Latino students demanded better educational conditions. It is based on 2016-17 data from the University of California, California State University and California Community Colleges.
Researchers reviewed data on the racial, ethnic and gender composition of the systems’ students, faculty and leaders on campus, in central offices and on governing boards.
In some cases, the data already are dated. The study says, for instance, that UC has only one female chancellor. There are now two, after Carol Christ was named to lead UC Berkeley last year. And while Cal State had no Asian American trustees at the time the research was conducted, this week, Gov. Jerry Brown nominated Wenda Fong, a Los Angeles TV executive, to the board.
Among the study’s findings:
— In the UC system, 69% of students are Latino, African American, Asian American, Pacific Islanders, Native Hawaiians and American Indians/Alaska natives, while 70% of tenured faculty and campus senior leadership are white. Women make up more than half of UC students and are proportionally represented in the UC Office of the President, filling 57% of senior positions. But there were no Latino senior leaders in the central office as of last year. Among UC regents, 73% are men and 62% are white.
— At Cal State, 65% of undergraduates are students of color, while about 6 out of 10 tenured faculty, campus leaders and senior executives in the chancellor’s office are white. No Asian Americans served in the Cal State Chancellor’s office as of last year, but they were proportionally represented among faculty. Nearly half of the senior leaders at the 23 campuses were women.
— At the California Community Colleges, Asian Americans, Latinos and blacks made up about two-thirds of students but less than one-third of tenured faculty, governors and senior leaders in the office of Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley, who is Latino. More than half of students, faculty and campus leaders were women.
The report called for a “wholesale review” of hiring, promotion and tenure practices and called on the governor to appoint more diverse governing board members.
You can read the report here.
Source: Teresa Wantanabe ~ LA Times ~ March 8, 2018
