Nearly Half of All Black College Students Have Never Had a Black Professor

The Campus Accountability Project is an initiative designed to begin holding campuses accountable for their diversity numbers. Many universities refuse to share data on the numbers of African Americans who've been hired or tenured, primarily because the results are so embarrassing. Additionally, there is an interest among black college students and alumni around the nation to see the problem mitigated. Equally intriguing is the fact that many Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) don't hire very many African American faculty either. Within the pool of survey participants who attended HBCUs, half (50.5 percent) didn't have more than three African American professors in a field outside of African American or Africana Studies during their four years of attending an HBCU. Professors from other countries are sometimes accused of using their powerful positions to lock out people who are not of the same ethnic background, so qualified African Americans sometimes have trouble getting access to black students at HBCUs, especially in the sciences. The lack of African American male professors on many HBCU campuses is even more disturbing; many universities have no more than one or two African American male faculty in their business schools or the sciences. I recommend you take a look at your own campus to see if the theory holds true. - BV on Money