As many media outlets are reporting, including this article from the New York Times, a recent study by graduate students at Yale notes that there has been very little progress in increasing the gender and racial/ethnic diversity of the faculty in Ivy League schools. Some excerpts from the article:

In 2003, Ivy League campuses hired 433 new professors into tenure-track jobs, but only 14 were black and 8 were Hispanic. Women received 150 of the jobs. . .

Professor Ehrenberg said that studies had found that eligible women often backed away from research universities because of the difficulties they saw in combining high-powered professional jobs and family. Some may also perceive discrimination, he said. . .

The problem in hiring members of minorities, Professor Ehrenberg said, is that the pool of candidates “just isn’t that large.” He said that under-represented minorities earned only 6.5 percent of all Ph.D.’s granted from 1989 to 1993, and that the percentages in the arts and sciences and engineering were even lower. More than 40 percent of the doctorates earned by blacks were in education. . .

The study also noted the sharp rise in faculty jobs that were not on the tenure track at all: to 7,792 slots in 2003 from 3,743 slots in 1993. The 103 percent increase far outstripped the growth in other faculty jobs. Such jobs represented less than a third of the Ivy faculty in 1993 but climbed to 45 percent by 2003.

The report itself is located at http://www.yaleunions.org/geso/reports/Ivy.pdf and notes that Blacks and Hispanics are 4 times more likely to get hired into non-tenure track positions than into tenure-track positions while White were only 2.5 times more likely to get hired into non-tenure track vs. tenure track positions.

Interestingly, the report apparently does not consider Asian Americans as an underrepresented group any longer. This may be true in certain fields such as engineering, math, computer sciences, and natural sciences, but I can almost guarantee that Asian Americans are still underrepresented in the humanities, social sciences, and education.

All in all, it’s a rather disappointing and depression look at where many faculty of color stand in this one area of (supposed) academic excellence.