There are more than 25,000 professors in the UK, but only 250 of them are black.
In all but one university, black people make up less than 20% of the staff, accounting for roughly 5% of staff at two thirds of all universities, with the majority of these staff in non-academic roles.
Across London’s universities, Imperial College London was found to be the best employer of black staff, with black people making up 32% of all employees, with an even split between academics and non-academics.
Wayne Mitchell, Associate Provost for EDI at Imperial, said that the lack of black academics at British universities is problematic.
He said: “What message is it sending out? Some would say it’s a pipeline issue, that we haven’t got enough people coming through.
“Some would also argue that we don’t have enough students taking the right A levels in order for them to come and be at these prestigious institutions.
“But you also have to ask yourself, are people being given the opportunity to excel and to be promoted to get to those positions?”
Pamela Jikiemi, Head of Film, Television, and Audio at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, echoed this sentiment.
She said: “Talent is everywhere but opportunity isn’t and then when the opportunities come, there’s the age-old issue of black exceptionalism – there can only be one of us at a time.
“We have to jump through so many more hoops just to be in the room.”
“We’ve been here a long time, we’ve contributed a great deal, yet we still seem to be jumping through the same hoops that lead down one path and everybody else leads down another path.
“And while we’re jumping through those hoops, we’re being figuratively beaten at the same time – ‘don’t be too loud’, ‘don’t be too quiet’, ‘I’m not sure what’s going on with the hair there.’”
Matthew Smith, a History Professor at University College London, also said that academia needs to move past the idea of black exceptionalism.
He said: “It’s great to celebrate those pioneers, but how many do you have now?
“Examples of exceptionality are then used to explain that the questions of race in this country are overstated because we have certain persons who are non-white in these positions.
“And that becomes a hugely problematic issue because it then delays the institutional commitment to seeing more long-term black representation.”
Smith said that the issue of the lack of diversity within academia cannot be solved by simply hiring one black faculty member.
He said: “There has to be the creation of a culture in which there’s support for the kind of work that black faculty would like to do, space to hear their voices integrated into everything from how you run the university’s administrative structure to the kind of research projects you do, grants you apply for, all of that.
“That takes time to build and that can’t all be put on the shoulders of one black faculty member who is then seen as the person to carry all of that, and that’s where I think a lot of the blockage is.”
Black people made up less than 2% of the staff at a quarter of universities, with Kingston University having the biggest proportion of its black staff in non-academic roles.
While most universities showed a trend of an increased amount of black staff within the last 10 years, black academics are still few and far between across the nation’s higher education institutions.
The data collected only includes registered Universities and not higher education facilities with degree awarding powers like RADA.
Of all of London’s universities, Royal Holloway had the highest proportion of academics amongst its black staff, with 57% of the black employees at the university in academic roles.
But Royal Holloway also had the lowest proportion of black staff of all London universities, with black people making up only 2.6% of their staff.
Wayne Mitchell attributes the lack of black academics to a history of black people having their educational aspirations limited by the British education system.
He said: “If you’ve got a generation who didn’t see the value of education because their experience of the British education system was less than ideal, are they going to be encouraging their children to go into it?
“It’s about demystifying the academic environment to make it more accessible.
“When you make it more accessible, people may feel that they belong within the space.”
Featured image credit: Unsplash
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