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Title: Pay and Representation of Racial/Ethnic Minorities in Higher Education Administrative Positions: The Century So Far
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2017
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Abstract: Black and Hispanic men with college degrees earn only 80 cents to the dollar of what White men earn in private industry. Therefore, education somewhat mitigates the minority pay gap, although it is still substantial. One might expect that institutions of higher education would be more equitable as employers, as they are viewed as more progressive. The data in this brief support that hypothesis. Across higher ed administrative positions, there exists no pay gap between minority and White administrators. This is great news; however, there still exists a substantial gap in the representation of minorities in higher ed administrative positions when compared to their representation in the population. This brief provides a summary of how higher education has represented and paid racial/ethnic minorities in administrative positions from 2001-16. For the purposes of this brief, we grouped non-White (minority) statuses collectively, given that until 2012 CUPA-HR collected and reported data for minority/non-minority status alone. In addition, each minority status on its own makes for an extremely small comparison group (Figure 1).The data in Figure 1 foretell one of the main messages of this brief: The clear majority (86%) of higher ed administrators are White. The underrepresentation of minorities in higher ed administrative positions mirrors that of private industry, where 87% of senior-level executives are White. Despite decades of diversity initiatives, the gap in minority representation for leadership positions remains persistent. There are many factors that may explain the large and growing gap between the U.S. minority and higher education administrator populations. One is that the labor pool for these positions is constrained to those individuals who possess at least an undergraduate degree and often a graduate degree in their field. The proportion of minorities who have the college degree needed for administrative positions is much lower than the percentage of non-minorities (Whites). For example, in 2015, the percentage of non-minorities who had a college degree was 33%, whereas the percentage of minorities with a college degree was 21%. For this reason, when we examine minority representation in this brief, we draw comparisons with the percentage of minorities who have a college degree, which represents the potential labor pool for these positions.
Url: http://www.cupahr.org/surveys/files/briefs/cupahr_research_brief_minorities.pdf
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Authors: Bichsel, Jacqueline; McChesney, Jasper
Publisher: College and University Professional Association for Human Resources
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Education, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Race and Ethnicity
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