Black tenured professors at the University of Pittsburgh could all fit in a small classroom. (Photo by Ryan Loew/PublicSource)
by Naomi Harris, PublicSource
As colleges and universities face demands to address racial inequities, there’s one stark gap at nearly every campus in Southwestern Pennsylvania.
Their ranks of tenured professors remain overwhelmingly White.
PublicSource looked at the 21 colleges and universities in Southwestern Pennsylvania that self-reported statistics on tenured professors to the U.S. Department of Education. All together, they had more than 3,600 tenured faculty members in fall 2019. Just 101 of them — about 3% — were Black.
In Allegheny County, Black residents make up 13% of the population, more diverse than the surrounding area, though less so than Pittsburgh, which is 22% Black. The combined student population of the campuses surveyed is 7% Black.
At many universities in the region, there are little to no Black tenured professors, according to the federal data released earlier this year. Some colleges like Carlow or Saint Vincent College, reported having no Black professors with tenure. Other universities, like Robert Morris University, only reported one.
In fact, at the majority of Pittsburgh-area colleges, you can count on a single hand the Black professors who hold tenure. Even at the University of Pittsburgh’s main campus, the region’s biggest university by far, all the Black tenured professors would fit in one average classroom: 27 of them — or roughly 2% of the tenured faculty of 1,163.
The pipeline looks only slightly better. Of the more than 1,300 professors on the tenure track at the region’s colleges and universities, 68 are Black (5%), according to the federal data.
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