Why faculty diversity at universities still lags far behind the changing demographics of college students

Faculty of color made up about 8% of full-time U.S. faculty in 1975 versus 16% of students who were people of color in 1976. By 2022, people of color were 28% of faculty against 41% of the general population, while Hispanic, Black, and Asian students together made up well over 40% of enrollment.

Following the 2014 Ferguson protests and the 2020 murder of George Floyd, at least 184 research universities made public faculty-diversity commitments, with the share of underrepresented faculty at surveyed schools rising from 9% to 12% between 2015 and 2024. But by early 2026, at least 108 of those universities had fully or partially rolled back their pledges, alongside more than 45 state bills introduced in 2023 to restrict DEI efforts in higher education.

Faculty of color interviewed describe tokenism, with one former Bates College professor writing he felt 'hired to be visibly Black first and a scholar second, if at all.' Research cited links greater faculty diversity to improved student retention and completion, particularly for Black and Hispanic students, and to stronger, less narrowly framed academic research.

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