For Derek Hernandez, attending university played a pivotal role in creating the person he is today. The academic opportunities presented to him at Quinnipiac University along with the experiences he gained through joining multiple cultural-centered clubs helped him mature into a person ready to step into the professional world.
“I feel like I’m looking at two different people honestly,” Hernandez, senior 3+1 marketing major, said. “Coming in as a freshman I was a little arrogant and I just didn’t understand the spaces that I was in.”
Personal growth did not come easy despite being able to pursue higher education after high school.
“But again, I was also lonely,” Hernandez said. “I didn’t have the support, I didn’t have the people to talk to or to ask questions to.”
For students of color across the United States, it can be difficult adjusting to a university where the demographics lean towards a majority white student body or faculty and administration.
Universities across the U.S. have faculty and student bodies that are not representative of the world outside their walls. Faculty and students of color are at institutions in significantly lower numbers than white people.
In 2020 approximately 51.2% of 18,991,800 undergraduate students were students of color compared to 23.4% of 836,597 faculty members according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
For students coming from states and cities with a high minority population, this shift in demographics can pose a difficult situation when making decisions.
While touring colleges in high school, Victoria Salazar who is now a junior criminal justice major at the University of New Haven did not feel confident in potential schools she had originally applied to. On tours, she would notice the stark difference in the student body.
“There wasn’t a lot of diversity,” Salazar said. “Even in the accepted students conference, there was a parent that was brought to tour with the administration, just to get students to be excited about going into Penn State. It honestly seemed like they had the token minority with them just to get other minorities to be like, ‘yay, they’re diverse,’ but the rest of the administration and students that were also there were also white or white-passing.”
Salazar made her final decision to attend the University of New Haven based on their transparency with students and her comfortability walking on campus.
“They did have a more comfortable environment for me there,” Salazar said. “They had student tours, so the students were doing the tours compared to parents and administration.”
Despite most faculty members providing safe spaces for students, minority students often find more comfort in peers that are similar to them and share the same background or experiences. The levels of comfortability tend to stem from being able to openly talk to those that understand the difficulties of adjusting to a new environment.
“There was a girl that I actually became friends with, she plays softball for UNH, and I was talking to her about the diversity within the school,” Salazar said. “She told me that if I ever needed, like a little bit more connections with people that look like me that I could always join the different clubs and stuff that try to help aid with that.”
Some universities have actively tried to reduce this imbalance to create a more accurate representation of the world we live in and to create a more inviting environment for students of color.
These same universities have also struggled in their attempts because of the coronavirus pandemic having a significant effect on the professors that have been able to keep their jobs coupled with the systemic racism that plays a role in the academic world.
Unemployment rates rose to their highest level at 14.8% in April 2020 since 1948 when data collection began, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The national average remained abnormally high, but the trend continued when looking at individual racial categories. During the peak of the pandemic, African Americans and Hispanics remained with the highest unemployment rates at 16.7% and 18.5% respectively.
Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut was able to reduce the size of its faculty during the peak of the pandemic, but also made sure to increase the number of those hired the following year without creating a large racial disparity.
Yale let go of 144 faculty members in 2020. Of these members, 69% were white, 3% were Black or African American, 4% were Hispanic or Latino and 12% were Asian America. The following year, their hiring practices showed a slight increase in minority faculty members. Of the 260 new hired, 5% were Black or African American, 5% were Hispanic or Latino and 18% were Asian American. The number of white professors at the University fell by 19%.
Despite Yale being able to increase the diversity of its faculty, not all universities followed the same trend.
Quinnipiac University has remained steady in its introduction of minority professors to the university. In 2019, the university had 77 faculty members be part of minority groups compared to 72 for the years 2020-2021.
Whether public or private, small or large, universities have grappled with the racial imbalances among their faculty.
Professor of Sociology at Quinnipiac University, Suzanne Hudd, believes the large imbalance of white professors to professors of color can be attributed to the systemic racism that plays a large role in the education system as well.
“I think the problem is that every university feels this pain. Because of the systemic racism and the lack of people in those positions, we’re all going for the same people. It’s going to be hard for everybody to take big steps on this issue in a really quick way because there just aren’t enough available bodies out there to fill them.”
Quinnipiac Professor, Suzanne Hudd
Students on campus are no stranger to this ideology. Quinnipiac University sophomore diagnostic medical sonography major, Alondra Santos understands why it might be difficult for universities to find people to fill professor positions.
“I’m a first-gen myself, so I know it’s now just starting to be more accessible for us to go to college, to say the least,” Santos said. “We all don’t end up going into education, a lot of us go into health care, law and other majors. So, I feel like even the people who are going to school and they’re first-gen, they may not even end up in education so that’s another factor.”
The small pool of minority college graduates that end up going into education does play a role in the availability of education professionals. Santos believes there’s another factor at hand that could play a big role in the speed at which universities tackle these issues.
Universities across the U.S. need to actively show their efforts to professors of color to make college campuses a welcoming space where they would want to continue their careers.
“I also feel like it depends on how hard or how bad the university really wants it like how can you get professors of color here? It’s all about equity,” Santos said. “So that ties into the school’s marketing and their brand and their mission. How are you showing them that Quinnipiac is a place for them the same way they sell it to their students?”
The stark contrast between white professors and professors of color may cause some students to lose confidence in parts of their academic journey.
According to a campus climate survey conducted by the University of New Haven, approximately 26.6% of 959 students felt impartial to the belief that their university “…has campus staff who regularly speak about the value of diversity and inclusion.”
For Salazar, her criminal justice-centered university could benefit greatly by introducing the topic of diversity through professors and then to students.
“I think especially for criminal justice, it’s important to have diverse professors because of the systemic racism within the criminal justice system,” Salazar said. “So, it would help future professionals of criminal justice have less of a bias and more of an open understanding of how the criminal justice system works.”
Classes revolving around social issues and current events are where having a professor of color teach the material would be beneficial. Quinnipiac alumna, Andrea Reyes recalls how her sociology and medical classes may have differed if taught by minority professors.
“I think it’s important for people studying in the medical field to know all of these things [racial disparities] because if not, all these biases are going to continue and we’re just going to keep damaging communities of color,” Reyes said.
Apart from academic concerns and inquiries, students of color find that it is easier to relate to and approach professors of their same ethnicity and/or culture.
“Coming from someone who, growing up was around a demographic of like 90% Latinos or Latinx, it’s really nice going to an out-of-state school and having professors that more or less look like you,” Salazar said. “It gave me a sense of comfortability because obviously coming here was a culture shock and not many people look like me or speak like me. It was more comforting because you feel like they more or less have the same experiences as you.”
Diversity among faculty has been brought to the attention of administrators across the university in recent years. With this strong push toward creating plans and strategies to push for more minority professionals in the academic world, students have also spoken out on the importance of representation.
“Simply put, representation really does matter,” Santos said. “It is really important, some people don’t realize how important it is.”