Princeton aims higher at achieving diversity

PRINCETON Princeton has a problem.

The renowned university released a report Thursday on the state of the school's diversity, highlighting areas where perceived gaps exist and offering recommendations to improve diversity among its students, faculty, and staff.

"To begin with, ours is an increasingly pluralistic society," the report reads, "and, simply put, Princeton and its peers do not come close to looking like America today."

The report's suggestions include formalizing the university's position on diversity, creating plans within academic departments for recruiting a range of students and faculty, and establishing benchmarks to be monitored on a regular basis.

The report was prepared by a committee created in January 2012 by then-President Shirley M. Tilghman and cochaired by Brent Henry, a university trustee, and Deborah Prentice, chair of the psychology department.

It begins by analyzing the role of diversity - its effects on learning and scholarship - and recommending the university "publicly articulate why this is fundamental to its understanding of itself and to its future."

Other issues of diversity are harder to address, the committee notes, because of their systemic nature.

One of the committee's findings, based on surveys, focus groups, an academic conference and literature review, was that the school's populations become more homogenous the higher one goes up the academic ladder.

At the undergraduate level, the Class of 2016 is the most diverse, according to the report, with 42 percent students of color.

By gender, the undergraduate population is 51 percent male and 49 percent female. That shifts dramatically at other academic levels: 64 percent of doctoral students are male, as are 80 percent of full professors. White students account for 50 percent of the undergraduate population; more than 80 percent of tenured or tenure-track faculty are white.

Part of the lack of diversity, the committee said, was due to choosing from select "feeder" schools: 49 percent of tenured or tenure-track faculty have Ph. D.s from just six institutions. When those schools themselves have limited pools for selecting doctoral students, the problem compounds at each rung on the ladder.

"There are challenges at elite institutions. . . . The standards, the definitions for hiring and tenure, are rigorous, which I support, but sometimes more narrow than I would argue they should be," said Wendell Pritchett, the chancellor of Rutgers-Camden, who at that campus has created a Committee on Institutional Equity and Diversity.

Pritchett, Rutgers' first black chancellor, is no stranger to elite institutions, with degrees from Brown University, Yale University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

"There are some people who would like to count the number of publications in the most prestigious journal, and [say] that's the only criteria that matters," said Pritchett, who said he is acquainted with new president Charles L. Eisgruber but was not involved in the Princeton report. "And I would argue that a successful professor can have any number of different kinds of qualifications on their resumé."

The report lays out best practices for the different populations of graduate students, faculty, and administrators, issuing a series of recommendations for each.

Among the recommendations: creating a "strategic diversity planning model" for each academic department, forming a committee on diversity to implement that model, providing training on unconscious bias, and increasing outreach to potential students or faculty members in order to strengthen the pipeline.

In a statement issued alongside the report, Eisgruber said he would begin implementing some recommendations. A meeting with academic department chairs will launch his efforts with the diversity planning model, a diversity committee will be created by the graduate school, and the university's human resources office has, he said, begun work with administrative departments.

Pritchett lauded the university for issuing its report, saying it was important to show commitment to diversity.

"If the elite institutions say that this is important, then it will give support to the disciplines that are looking to expand their diversity," Pritchett said. "Making statements at places like Princeton is important."