A recent report on faculty diversity (or the lack thereof) at Harvard University suggests that there’s still a lot of room for improvement on that front. According to an article in The Harvard Crimson, gains made from 2005 to 2007 were minimal.
The proportion of female ladder faculty members did not rise by more than 3 percent in any faculty over the two-year period measured in the report, and overall minority representation for ladder faculty increased by less than 2 percent during the period.
The disparities in diversity were particularly evident for hiring and retention of tenured faculty. The report says women make up less than a quarter of tenured faculty members in 10 of 13 faculty populations assessed by the study, and minorities claim fewer than 15 percent of tenured professors in 11 of 13 faculties.
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11 Responses to Harvard Gets Low Marks for Diversity
rsgassle - March 15, 2012 at 5:55 am
What about the Fulbright centers?
skreader - March 15, 2012 at 8:57 am
What about the International Institute of Education?
http://www.iie.org/Who-We-Are/History
11336803 - March 15, 2012 at 4:42 pm
There are U.S. offices that provide such services, Fulbright Commissions being one and advising centers being another. When I lived abroad there was also “America House” which had reading room, libraries, discussions and other kinds of programming including how to study in the U.S. I presented on such a panel for faculty at one such discussion. British Council is a good model,so is the Goethe Institute/DAAD. The reason we do not do this is we do not want to pay for it.
j8080 - March 15, 2012 at 5:00 pm
“But the EducationUSA presence seems thinner in many countries and at
many international conferences than the British Council’s presence.” I’d push the author to actually get a count first. I venture to guess that there are probably more EducationUSA centers in either IIE offices or AMIDEAST offices than there are British Councils. Some of the Embassies also have libraries with information, though tight security at the embassies does discourage entry. The author’s point that given the high numbers of American universities, there should be a strong presence of officially sponsored centers is a good one – especially given the confusing accreditation organizations in the U.S. and the proliferation of diploma mills.
Marty Bennett - March 15, 2012 at 6:20 pm
Today’s blog from David Wheeler asks a very interesting
question, one that the U.S. Department of State has continued to address
by supporting the global network of EducationUSA Advising Centers. This
network has never been stronger than it is today and is uniquely placed to meet
the needs of prospective students considering study the United States as well
as the increasing number of U.S. colleges and universities hoping to expand
international student enrollment.
Hosted in key locations in 170 countries, EducationUSA
Advising Centers offer a welcoming environment with positive images of the
United States and U.S. campus life where students and their families access
information about U.S. higher education. In 2011, over 1.8 million students
visited EducationUSA centers around the world. EducationUSA Advisers are also committed to
reaching a wider prospective student audience through extensive outreach events
at local schools, universities, and other public venues. Living
where audiences live also extends to the web and social/virtual media.
Extending outreach beyond the in-person interaction, the EducationUSA network
reached over 850,000 contacts through social media platforms with an additional
13+ million visits to EducationUSA websites.
Explaining the incredibly diverse U.S. higher education
landscape and decentralized admission process for thousands of institutions is
a monumental task. EducationUSA aims to simplify the path a prospective
international student must navigate to successfully reach his/her goal of
studying in the United States. To that end, EducationUSA launched “Your 5 Steps to U.S. Study” in October 2011 to break down
this process to its essential elements: (1) Research Your Options; (2) Complete
Your Application; (3) Finance Your Studies; (4) Apply for Your Student Visa;
and (5) Prepare for Your Departure. Last week, EducationUSA also launched a 5 Steps Facebook app to provide an interactive 3D
virtual advising experience that helps students understand and visualize the
entire process.
Increasingly, the U.S. higher education community is
expanding its collaboration with EducationUSA to attract qualified
international students to U.S. campuses. In 2011, EducationUSA Advisers hosted
more than 10,000 U.S. college and university visits to their centers and at
EducationUSA college fairs. Over 1,000 accredited U.S. institutions are
accessing a wide range of services and tools to research possible markets,
guidance for recruitment travel, and foreign education system information
through the EducationUSA website.
Actively reaching out to the U.S. higher education
community, EducationUSA participates in over twenty conferences annually for international
education professionals in the U.S. and abroad. EducationUSA will take
center-stage again at its 3rd annual EducationUSA Forum in Washington, DC from June 27-29,
2012. Last year, the Forum brought over
360 U.S. institutional and higher education association representatives
together with over 70 EducationUSA staff from around the world. More
information about EducationUSA is available at http://www.educationusa.state.gov.
academicvalues - March 16, 2012 at 12:51 am
What relationships does your organization have with the 4000 US colleges and universities?
Ezra Hart Tecson - March 16, 2012 at 2:34 am
Education agents are essential to the international education industry, despite the controversy that surrounds them. “We must step away from the debate and understand how differently prospective students and their parents view agents, depending on where in the world they live.”One of the major constraints on the development of an education market abroad has been the presence of the commercial wing of the BC in those markets. It uses its subsidized position and political leverage and patronage to get pretty much what it wants with its diplomatic top cover. Thanks for this article, it will help the public to be notify….
engageabroad - March 16, 2012 at 3:54 am
Interesting article. I have experience with both the British Council and Fulbright/ Education USA networks and British universities. My view is that the models relate to the two countries. The USA has public and private universities, but the UK has only one private university and a start up (NCHUM) the rest are public. It is therefore logical that the UK government would market universities it funds. Whereas in the US, the government has seen less need to market private and public universities who have the means to do it themselves and they do so very actively at recruitment fairs that in London are bigger every year. In fact UK universities have for a few years now adopted marketing along the lines of US colleges. And we must not forget the actual campuses overseas as well as private companies that offer test prep. All of these market US education even if people do not use their services. Then there is the internet. My Education USA operation used to get 4 million hits a month mostly from outside of the UK and from places without an accessible information center. The US model is not the British Council and it does appear to be working.
Marty Bennett - March 16, 2012 at 7:14 am
Our online services for US higher education institutions are available free of charge to all accredited U.S. colleges & universities. So our relationships with individual institutions depend on how that college chooses to engage with us, which can happen on a variety of levels (purely online, intl recruitment travel, domestic conference connections, armchair, or a mix of some or all of the above. The past three years we’ve also made a concerted outreach to the U.S. higher education community through presentations at regional & national NAFSA conferences, AIEA, NAGAP, AACRAO, CCID, Forum on Education Abroad, NACAC, OACAC, and others as well as encouraging the growth of state and regional international education consortia which now number near 30. These individual consortium typically have developed around the strength in numbers philosophy that colleges seek to promote their states as prime destinations for international students.
jennmillerefl - March 16, 2012 at 4:28 pm
Please see the new partnership ECA has developed with TESOL International to meet English language learning needs around the world. English language fluency is a significant road block for many international students who hope to study in the US. This partnership has already been compared to the British Council’s work in the field of language acquisition by the British media.
http://exchanges.state.gov/ppp/tesol-international-association.html
vailmij - March 25, 2012 at 12:41 pm
A recent NUFFIC report titled ‘International Student Recruitment:Policies and Developments in Selected Countries’ (link below) states that “EducationUSA is a global network of over 400 advisory centres in 134 countries,” leading me to believe that they have a stronger presence than suggested by this article.
Of course, as you describe, there are many other important factors that play into the (in)effectiveness of the US “cultural-relations effort.” Security and visa restrictions are an obvious obstacle, but also a different philosophy about the role of the government can help explain why the federal government isn’t as engaged in recruiting international students.
http://www.nuffic.nl/home/news-events/news-archive/2012/january/new-nuffic-report-on-international-student-recruitment-policies