More than a year and a half after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd in May 2020, which caused a national calculation about institutional racism and social inequality, signs of change in higher education They can be difficult to detect. A place that perhaps you have not thought about looking is behind the desk of the president of the university.
But in the 18 months of June 2020 to November 2021, more than one third-35.4 percent of the presidents and chancellors that Americans the universities and universities contracted were members of racial minority groups. A full quarter (25.3 percent) was black, an internal higher education analysis of its presidential database. That figure is 22.5 percent when excluding historically black colleges and universities.
Compared, less than a quarter, 22 percent, of presidential contracting in the 18 months of December 2018 until May 2020 were not blank. Only 14.6 percent of campus leaders contracted in that period before Floyd's death was black.
more popular
The proportion of Latin presidents also grew in the months after the June 2020 dividing line, at almost 7 percent, from 4 percent in the previous 18 months. There were no changes in the representation of Asian presidents or Native Americans.
To the extent that these raw data can be used to measure progress in the diversification of the University Presidency, not all signs point. The proportion of women who were contracted, for example, actually decreased slightly, 34.8 percent at 2020-21 of 35.3 percent in 2019-20.
But women who were hired from June 2020 to November 2021 were more racially diverse (62 percent were white, 27 percent black and 8 percent Latin, compared to 72 percent of White, 21 percent black and 4 percent Latin in the previous period), and color women represent 13 percent of all presidents hired as of June. 2020 to November 2021. Googleg.cmd.push (Function () Googleg.Display ("DFP-AD-Article_in_Article"););
Experts at university and university leadership and diversity in higher education attribute the increased contracting of minority leaders to several factors: intensified external pressure on universities to diversify, related to the movements of murdery of black life and racial justice; an expanded gas pipeline of minority candidates, due in part to a large number of long-dating and new programs, designed to prepare new leaders; a change in the features and competences that the institutions seek in the leaders; and changes in the way where and where are universities and universities, to name several.
"Maybe some of these initiatives in which we have put so many efforts are finally paying," said Lorelle L. Espinosa, Program Director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and a long-standing researcher about the Diversity of higher education. "It may be that, since the institutions felt more pressure to obtain various candidate groups to respond to the racial account, the individuals were there to be found."
Others said that, while the numbers may seem to be encouraged. "History tells us that we do not get too trapped in the current," like Eddie L. Cole, Associate Professor of Higher Education and History at University of California, Los Angeles, put it. The hiring of more color presidents is one thing, Cole said; "It remains to see what kind of support these presidents will receive in these positions, and if they will have autonomy to change how their institutions work."
Related stories
Presidential Diversity on you
Rate and Comment
