The Atlantic

The Disciplines Where No Black People Earn Ph.D.s

In more than a dozen academic fields—largely STEM related—not a single black student earned a doctoral degree in 2017.
Source: Douglas Sacha / Getty

Some trends in higher education move up and down—ebbing and flowing with the economy and demographic shifts. And then there are those that are stagnant, ever-present reminders of the work America’s universities still need to do.

One of those is the problem of faculty diversity: Less than 6 percent of full-time faculty members at institutions across the country are black. Many factors coalesce to bring about that dearth of black faculty, but one of

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