California's higher education workforce has more racial and ethnic diversity than a decade ago, according to a brief published by the Legislative Analyst's Office, or LAO, last week, though gaps between worker and student demographics remain.
The LAO found that the proportions of Latino and Asian workers increased as the share of white workers declined at each of the state's three higher education segments between 2013 and 2023.
Among faculty members, the share of tenured or tenure-track faculty who are African American, Latino or Native American was also higher in 2023 than a decade earlier.
Of the state's three higher education segments, such faculty had the least representation at UC and the most at the community colleges, where they were more than a quarter of tenured or tenure-track faculty.
The LAO's analysis suggests the shift is driven in part by more-recent faculty hires at the state's two university systems.
At Cal State, for example, more than half of tenure-track faculty hires in 2012 were white; in 2022, white faculty appeared to be closer to a third of tenure-track hires.
At the California Community Colleges, LAO observed that greater diversity means faculty are beginning to look more like the student body they serve, though a gap between the two persists.
More than half of first-time community college students were African American, Latino or Native American as of 2022. Those groups made up only about 30 percent of first-time faculty, tenure-track hires that year.
