BY GLENN COLBY AND CHELSEA FOWLER
Today the AAUP released an in-depth look at the makeup and salaries of full-time faculty members in US higher education. Using data collected by the US Department of Education, this snapshot provides an updated demographic profile of full-time faculty by academic rank and institution type, highlighting disparities among women and people of color.
Key findings are:
- Women make up 46.7 percent of full-time faculty members, 53.8 percent of part-time faculty members, and 50.0 percent of faculty members overall.
- Among women faculty members, 49.6 percent are employed part time, whereas only 42.5 percent of men faculty members are employed part time.
- Women make up 42.5 percent of full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty members and 53.9 percent of full-time contingent (non-tenure-track) faculty members.
- Salaries for full-time women faculty members are approximately 81.2 percent of men’s. Among tenured or tenure-track faculty members, women earn 82.4 percent of what men earn.
- Among tenure-line faculty members, women make up 50.0 percent of assistant professors but only 45.0 percent of associate professors and 32.5 percent of full professors.
- Among full professors, women’s salaries are approximately 85.1 percent of men’s. Among associate professors and assistant professors, women earn approximately 92.7 percent and 90.7 percent, respectively, of what men earn.
- The percentage of full-time women faculty members varies by institutional category, ranging from 54.7 percent among associate’s (two-year) institutions to 42.3 percent among doctoral institutions. For full-time tenure-line faculty members, the percentage ranges from 54.4 percent among associate’s institutions to 36.3 percent among doctoral institutions.
- Underrepresented minority faculty members make up only 12.9 percent of full-time faculty members across the country, despite making up 32.6 percent of the US population.
- Only 5.2 percent of full-time faculty members self-identify as Hispanic or Latino, whereas 17.5 percent of the US population self-identifies as Hispanic or Latino.
- Only 6.0 percent of full-time faculty members self-identify as Black or African American, whereas 12.7 percent of the US population self-identifies as Black or African American.
The AAUP’s analysis confirms that women faculty members continue to face unique challenges in academia with respect to employment, advancement, salary, and job security, and that higher education is by no means immune from systemic racism. The pay and opportunity gaps identified in this data snapshot are the result of many factors beyond gender, race, and ethnicity, and closing them will require innovative and sustained efforts.
This data snapshot draws upon data from the provisional release of the Fall 2018 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Human Resources survey component. Throughout the report, we have followed the terminology used by IPEDS for ease of data comparison.
Visit the AAUP website to download the complete data snapshot.
Glenn Colby is the AAUP’s senior researcher and Chelsea Fowler is the AAUP’s research assistant.
I often wonder what the term “Underrepresented” means in the context of academia, especially when gender and minority group statistics are compared to the general population. What is the mathematical or social point of such comparisons? Should the percentage of Black professors be exactly the same as the proportion of Blacks in the general populace? If not, isn’t that what Affirmative Action was supposed to cure?
More important, even though I know it’s a right-wing argument — although it is a solid logical critique — should that same standard apply to the NBA?: that the percentage of professional Black basketball players should match the percentage of Blacks in the general population (12.7%)? How about LatinX and Asians in that same sports league?
Aren’t Black students entitled to the best possible professors, regardless of epidermal pigmentation? Sure, let’s use Affirmative Action and other programs to boost the numbers but those programs have been around for decades. Is there a way to PROVE that it is “systemic racism” — the easy answer — that is the cause of the disappointing stats or is the situation MUCH more complicated than that?
Incidentally, when I was in any position of authority in academia, I always hired the woman or minority faculty or staff member, provided that they were among the most qualified.
It’s interesting that the data present the number of full-time faculty who are in underrepresented minority groups in comparison to their numbers in the general population as opposed to in comparison to their numbers among those holding doctoral degrees. The number of doctorates earned by U.S. citizens who are Hispanic or Latino and Black has been increasing, but still only about 7% of all doctoral degrees awarded in the U.S. last year were to citizens who are Hispanic or Latino and only about 7% of all doctoral degrees awarded in the U.S. last year were to citizens who are Black. Assuming that all U.S. citizens who earn a doctorate go on to become a higher ed faculty member (even though we know some go into other, often higher paying, professions), we should not be surprised that only 5.2% and 6% of full-time faculty today are Hispanic or Latino and Black, respectively. If we want more people of color as academic professionals, and I assume we do, then we need more members of these groups to go to graduate school and get doctorates, and then opt for academic careers (even though an academic career is becoming less and less attractive, but that’s another story).
Further, although women are now getting doctorates as often as men, this was not the case 20 and 30 years ago, so of course we should expect that men outnumber women at the Full Professor rank- given how many years in the profession it takes to get promoted to Full Prof. And until as many women enter the highest-paying academic fields (economics instead of English, or engineering instead of social work), we will find that women professors *on average* earn less than men professors. But I’ll bet anything that women who teach social work earn about the same as the men who teach social work, and that the women who teach aerospace engineering earn the same as the men who teach aerospace engineering. Whether this report or blog post intends to mislead people or just doesn’t understand data, I don’t know. But either way it’s a bit embarrassing. As academics we should be having a sophisticated discussion of how to diversify the professoriate and listing specific goals or benchmarks along with reasons why these goals are important.
Thank you for expanding on my point about the apples & oranges statistical comparisons used in the original post. Maybe there IS “systemic racism” in the U.S. and academia but it may not be happening very much in the hiring of professors unless one wants to start hiring folks who don’t hold a doctorate.. Like so many things in life, this is an overdetermined phenomenon and simplistic use of “data” is not the best means to arrive at a solution — whether it be for minorities or majorities (i.e., women). :-).
As Disraeli (or Mark Twain) famously said: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”