Increasing Faculty Diversity: The Occupational Choices of High-Achieving Minority Students

In recent years, colleges have successfully increased the racial diversity of their student bodies. They have been less successful in diversifying their faculties. This book identifies the ways in which minority students make occupational choices, what their attitudes are toward a career in academia, and why so few become college professors.

Table of Contents:
Contents List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgments 1. The Problem 2. Obtaining the Data 3. Ethnic Differences in Occupational Choices 4. Influences on Initial Occupational Choice 5. The Influence of Academic Performance 6. Attitudes toward Academia 7. Role Models, Interaction with Faculty, and Career Aspirations (with Melissa Bolyard) 8. The Influence of School Characteristics 9. The Pipeline into Academia (with Elizabeth Arias) 10. Policy Recommendations Appendix A: The Questionnaires Appendix B: Supplementary Data Appendix C: Methodology and Measurement Notes References Name Index Subject Index

About the Author :
Stephen Cole is Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. At the time of her death, Elinor Barber was a research associate in the Provost's Office at Columbia University.

Review :
A vexing problem in American academia is how to ensure the adequate representation of minority groups in higher education, not only among students but even more importantly among faculty. Cole and Barber do those concerned with this issue a tremendous service by providing concrete information about the process by which minority students go on to become college and university professors. While many have offered policies to improve minority representation in the professoriate, theirs are the only recommendations to be grounded in hard facts and solid empirical research. -- Douglas Massey, coauthor of American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass Increasing Faculty Diversity confronts a perplexing issue--why the racial/ethnic composition of American college and university faculty is not representative of the American population--in a thoughtful and systematic way. In the process it dispels a number of popular myths and offers a concrete menu of steps that should be taken if academia wants to diversify its faculty. Readers interested in polemics should look elsewhere: here they will find an important social issue analyzed in a dispassionate way. -- Ronald Ehrenberg, author of Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much