The University of California college system is arguably the best public college system in the country. Its student population is also one of the most racially/ethnically diverse in the country. But a new report shows that sadly, its faculty population is not keeping up with its student demographics in terms of racial and ethnic representation:

All 10 University of California campuses need to make diversity an integral element of academic planning, faculty hiring, research agendas, curricular development and program reviews, a taskforce on improving faculty diversity recommended Tuesday.

The UC President’s Task Force on Faculty Diversity raised concerns about UC’s failure to take advantage of the growing pool of under-represented minority scholars.

While faculty diversity challenges aren’t limited to UC, the university system could do more to retain sought-after minority faculty and establish a pipeline of future faculty by boosting minority participation in doctoral programs, particularly in science and engineering.

The report notes that as of 2005, Whites are 78.6% of all UC faculty, Asians are 13.4%, Hispanic 4%, Blacks 2.5%, and Native Americans 0.4%.

For Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans, it is clear that they are severely underrepresented as UC faculty. For Asians however, it’s a little less clear -- it depends on what population you compare them to. That is, compared to UC students, of whom about one-third are Asian, then Asian faculty are underrepresented.

But compared to California’s racial proportions, where Asians are about 12% of the state population, Asian faculty are evenly represented. And compared to the national proportions, where Asians are only 5% of the total U.S. population, Asian faculty at the UCs can be seen as overrepresented.

At any rate, the other point to consider is that university administrators can come up with all the goals and plans of increasing faculty diversity all they want, but as many professors like me will tell you, telling an academic department at any of the UCs who they should hire (or the perception of being told who they should hire) will almost always led to resistance and hostility.

In other words, goals are one thing -- overcoming organizational inertia and departmental passive-aggressive resistance is a whole other matter.