The racial divide among universities – 53 universities have less than 5% ethnic minority students while 20 have more than 40% – mirrors the failure of many universities to fairly employ and promote ethnic minority academic staff, according to lecturers’ union NATFHE.
NATFHE was responding to a report on student ethnicity published today in a national newspaper*. The report quotes statistics from the higher education statistics agency HESA which reveal that many universities are failing to recruit students from ethnic minority communities, with older Russell Group universities performing worse than 'post-92’ new universities.
Roger Kline, head of the universities department at NATFHE said:
‘Many factors discourage ethnic minority students from applying to universities other than those at which ethnic minority students are well represented, but the failure of most universities to employ, promote or treat fairly their ethnic minority lecturers is surely one reason.
‘Financial pressures and family commitments will encourage many ethnic minority students to ‘stay local’ but where a perception of exclusion applies, there would surely be less hesitation to study at certain institutions if black and Asian academics were more evident, especially in senior positions, and helping to recruit from minority communities.
‘Black and ethnic minority academic staff are disproportionately underpaid, junior and part-time. The average black lecturer earns 13% less than their white counterpart. If universities have not addressed their own institutional racism they will not easily encourage ethnic minority students to risk unfamiliar surroundings.'
‘It is no secret what institutions need to do: fair treatment of all staff, transparent appointment and promotion procedures and race impact assessment on all significant changes.’
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