As has been the case with past data blogs, many of the conversations occurring in higher education are focused on the concepts associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Universities, systems, and state boards of higher education are grappling with the implications of DEI, especially in terms of identifying equity gaps in enrollment, persistence, and graduation, and plotting a course of action to continue closing those gaps. One such line of inquiry that has come to the forefront has been whether gaps exist between student and faculty demographic representation on campus. We briefly explored this concept in an earlier blog post, finding that, in general at Texas public universities, female faculty identified as Asian, African American, or Hispanic/Latinx are underrepresented when compared with the proportion of students in the same demographic group, as are male faculty identified as African American or Hispanic/Latinx. As an extension to the previous analysis, we now return to this concept of student-faculty representation in this blog post, which will start a series of posts that will attempt to answer the following question: Does closing the representation gap promote increased student outcomes for historically underrepresented minority students?
Previously described in other blog posts, we are calculating the location quotient (LQ) that allows comparison across demographic groups within different grouping variables. As a “ratio of ratios” metric, the LQ takes the percentage of faculty within a specific demographic as the numerator and uses the percentage of students in that same demographic as the denominator to calculate the LQ score. Interpreting the LQ score is relatively straightforward:
The visualization to the right shows the average LQ score for each race/ethnicity category by Carnegie Classification for all public universities in the United States. The data show that White faculty are over-represented, while Black or African American faculty and Hispanic or Latinx faculty are under-represented across all three Carnegie Classification groups.
While we’ve established that there are gaps in level of representation for historically underrepresented student populations at public universities in the U.S., the question remains as to whether larger gaps (as indicated by lower LQ scores) lead to worse 6-year graduation rates for Black or African American and Hispanic or Latinx students. In the visualizations below, we show institution-level data for LQ Score (x-axis) and 6-Year Graduation Rate (y-axis) for all public universities in the IPEDS dataset. The first visualization shows data for Black or African American students and faculty, and the second one is for Hispanic or Latinx students and faculty. The size of each circle is based on the total undergraduate enrollment in fall 2019, while the color-coding scheme is associated with the six public university systems in Texas, the group of public independent universities in Texas, and out-of-state universities (light gray). The vertical line at the 1.00 mark on the x-axis shows where there is a perfect match between demographic representation of students and faculty. The line running left-to-right across the scatterplot shows the relationship between the two variables of interest: LQ Score and Graduation Rate.
Black or African American Students and Faculty: First Tab
Hispanic or Latinx Students and Faculty: Second Tab
NOTES: Due to some of the restrictions within the IPEDS data, not all institutions have data for either graduation rates or LQ scores and may be missing in the visualizations below.
The data shown above create as many questions as they provide answers.
2 Comments
I have a couple of questions to help me understand what I see here. Hispanic/LatinX students in many cases choose their race as White and their ethnicity as Hispanic/LatinX. Does this information disaggregate White students from White/Hispanic students? Also, some Hispanic students choose their race but not their ethnicity and vice versa; however, many Black students choose their race and ethnicity as African American, while others choose their race as Black and do not choose their ethnicity as African American because they are not, many are from other countries and may not identify as African American. Are these nuances in data collection represented in the charts and graphs provided here? The same questions are relevant to faculty.
Thank you for the feedback and questions, Dr. Britt. These data were pulled from IPEDS, so we use the discretized categories that they provide. Based on the IPEDS reporting guidelines, students who are American citizens are asked to complete a two-part question related to ethnicity and race: 1) Are you Hispanic or Latino? 2. Select one or more of the following races: American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, or White. If the student is an international student, they are categorized by IPEDS as a “Nonresident alien.”
Based on student responses, IPEDS requires universities to report the race and ethnicity data using the following guidelines:
If the individual self identifies as == Report to IPEDS as…
These guidelines also apply for the reporting of faculty/staff data within the Human Resources component of the IPEDS reporting surveys. A complete breakdown of the guidelines can be found here: https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/report-your-data/race-ethnicity-collecting-data-for-reporting-purposes
Please let me know if you have additional questions or thoughts.