Faculty in doctoral programs more responsive to white male prospective students, research finds

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/apa-fid041515.php

Public Release: 16-Apr-2015
American Psychological Association

Faced with requests to meet with potential doctoral students of easily identifiable gender, race or ethnicity, faculty in almost every academic discipline are significantly more responsive to white males than to women and minorities, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

And faculty in higher-paid disciplines, such as business, engineering/computer science and the life sciences, and those at private universities, show more of this bias than their counterparts in lower-paying disciplines and public universities, the study found.

"Our findings offer evidence that white males have a leg up over other students seeking mentoring at a critical early career juncture in the fields of business, education, human services, engineering and computer science, life sciences, natural/physical sciences and math, social sciences and marginally in the humanities," said lead researcher Katherine L. Milkman, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania. "Notably, the magnitude of the discrimination we found is quite large."

In business -- the most discriminatory discipline observed in the study -- women and minorities seeking guidance were collectively ignored at 2.2 times the rate of Caucasian males, Milkman said. "Even in the least discriminatory academic discipline -- the humanities (where discrimination did not reach statistical significance) -- women and minorities were still collectively ignored at 1.4 times the rate of Caucasian males when seeking guidance in the future."

Also, contrary to one of their hypotheses, Milkman and her colleagues Modupe Akinola, PhD, of Columbia University and Dolly Chugh, PhD, of New York University, found no evidence that as the representation of women and minorities in disciplines and universities increases, that discrimination against those groups decreases. Additionally, "there were no benefits to women of contacting female faculty, or to black or Hispanic students of contacting faculty of the same race or ethnicity," Akinola said. "Only Chinese students experienced significant benefits from contacting same-race faculty."

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