Black Faculty Are Vastly Underrepresented at Southern Colleges and Universities

New data shows that the level of Black, Hispanic, and other underrepresented college faculty members is not keeping pace with the changing student demographics in many states.

The data shows that only 9.2 percent of full- and part-time faculty members were Black at public four-year institutions in the 16-state region of the Southern Regional Education Board in 2017-18, the latest year data is available.

In those same public four-year colleges and universities, 17.9 percent of undergraduate students were Black. White faculty members were substantially overrepresented when compared to the undergraduate enrollments of their states. The report also breaks out statistics for the 16 states in the region.