I started this visualization to show how first-year classes at the highly rejective colleges had changed since COVID-19 forced them all to go to a test-optional approach for the Fall of 2021. But it sort of took on a life of its own after that, as big, beefy data sets often do.
The original point was to help discount the conventional wisdom, which is propped up by a limited, old study of a small set of colleges that showed test-optional policies didn’t affect diversity. I did this post last year, after just one year of data made it fairly clear they did at the institutions that had the luxury of selecting and shaping their class.
This year I took it a little farther. The views, using the tabs across the top, show the same trends (now going to 2022) for Public Land Grants, Public Flagships, the Ivy and Ivy+ Institutions. In each case, choose one using the control.
Note that I had colored the years by national trends: 2018 and 2019 are pre-test optional, gray is COVID, and blue is post-test optional. This is not to say that any individual college selected either required tests or went test-optional in those years, but rather shows the national trend. And remember these show enrolling students, not admitted students, which is why gray is critical; we know COVID changed a lot of plans, and thus 2020 may be an anomalous year.
The fourth view shows where students of any selected ethnicity enroll (again, use the dropdown box at the top to make a selection); the fifth view breaks out ethnicity by sector; and the final view allows you to look at diversity by sector and region (to avoid comparing diversity in Idaho, California, and Mississippi, for instance, three states with very different racial and ethnic makeups.)
On all views, hovering over a data point explains what you’re seeing.
If you work at a college or university, or for a private company that uses this data in your work, and want to support my time and effort, as well as software and web hosting costs, you can do that by buying me a coffee, here. Note that I won’t accept contributions from students, parents, or high school counselors, or from any company that wants to do business with my employer.
And, as always, let me know what jumps out at you here.
On January 30, 2024, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a final rule to implement a new beneficiary-centric selection process for H-1B registrations. This rule, which also introduces start date flexibility for certain H-1B cap-subject petitions and additional integrity measures, is scheduled for publication in the Federal Register on February 2, 2024, and will become effective 30 days later.
The rule does not finalize all the provisions in the H-1B Modernization Proposal from last October. Notably absent are changes to the definitions of H-1B specialty occupation, policies of deference to prior adjudications, and modifications to cap-gap protection, among others. DHS has indicated plans to publish a separate final rule to address these remaining aspects from October’s proposed rule.
Summary of Key Changes
Beneficiary-Centric Selection Process. The final rule introduces a change in the H-1B registration selection process. Instead of a registration-based lottery system, DHS will now implement a beneficiary-centric approach. This means that each foreign worker (beneficiary) will be entered into the selection process once, irrespective of the number of registrations submitted on their behalf. This change is designed to offer a fairer, more equitable system and reduce the potential for manipulation.
Start Date Flexibility. The final rule provides more flexibility for the employment start dates in H-1B cap-subject petitions. Employers will now be allowed to file petitions with start dates that are after October 1 of the relevant fiscal year. This aligns with current DHS policy and removes previous restrictions, offering more convenience for employers and beneficiaries.
Enhanced Integrity Measures. Under the final rule, DHS codifies its ability to deny or revoke H-1B petitions in cases where the underlying registration contains a false attestation or is otherwise invalid. Additionally, the rule stipulates that DHS may deny or revoke the approval of an H-1B petition if issues arise with the H-1B cap registration fee, such as if the fee is declined, not reconciled, disputed, or deemed invalid after submission.
In addition, USCIS will launch new organizational accounts in its online platform on February 28. These accounts are designed to enable collaboration within organizations and their legal representatives on H-1B registrations, petitions, and associated premium processing requests. While some details about this new account system and the e-filing function have been provided, USCIS is expected to release more comprehensive information in the coming weeks.
Important Update: We wish to clarify an important aspect regarding the USCIS final fee rule’s exemptions/reduced fees for nonprofit organizations. The rule specifies that the exemption/reduced fees apply to entities classified under the 501(c)(3) category, as per the Internal Revenue Code. This classification may not encompass many public universities and colleges, which, while tax-exempt, are generally not designated as 501(c)(3) organizations. We are aware of the confusion this may cause within the higher education community and are working with other higher education associations to seek clarification from USCIS.
On January 31, 2024, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a final rule to adjust certain immigration and naturalization benefit request fees, resulting in significantly higher fees for employment-based petitioners, with notable reductions and exemptions for certain higher education employers. USCIS claims that the increased fees, which will apply to any benefit request postmarked on or after April 1, 2024, will “allow USCIS to recover a greater share of its operating costs and support more timely processing of new applications.”
Background
Unlike other government agencies that receive the majority of their funding through congressional appropriations, USCIS receives approximately 96 percent of its funding from filing fees. The agency, after its last fee adjustment in 2016, conducted a fee review that revealed these fees were inadequate to meet the agency’s operating costs. This assessment led USCIS to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) in January 2023, which included substantial increases to various employment-based filing fees, including up to 200 percent increases for some petitions. In response to the proposal, CUPA-HR joined comments which addressed higher ed-specific concerns with the proposal including the impact the increased fees would have had on international scholars and institutions’ ability to hire nonimmigrant workers, including H-1B workers.
Final Rule Details
While the final rule is nearly 330 pages long and has significant implications for both employment-based and family-based filings, this blog post focuses on the notable changes from the proposed rule to the final rule that have the most significant implications for higher ed employers.
The proposed rule introduced a new fee to fund the Asylum Program with employer petition fees. The fee is $600 to be paid by any employer who files either a Form I-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker, or Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Workers. In the latest rule, USCIS finalized this fee but exempted the Asylum Program Fee for nonprofit petitioners that meet the Internal Revenue Code’s specific 501(c)(3) classification, resulting in a $0 fee for those entities. While the comments CUPA-HR signed onto requested that higher ed be exempt from the fee, based on precedents like the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1988, which exempted certain fees for colleges and universities, there is confusion regarding this exemption’s applicability to some public universities and colleges, as many do not fall under the 501(c)(3) classification.
In addition to the new Asylum Program Fee, USCIS is implementing the following changes to employment-based and employment-based “adjacent” filing fees:
Fee changes for visa classifications on Form I-129 and Form I-140: USCIS is imposing different fees for each visa classification sought on the Form I-129 nonimmigrant worker petition, replacing the uniform $460 Form I-129 filing fee across all classifications.
Fees for I-129 Petitions for H-1B workers: USCIS had proposed a 70 percent increase in the filing fee, from $460 to $780. In the final rule DHS did not increase the filing fee for nonprofits so it is still $460 (0 percent increase).
Fees for I-129 Petitions for L-1 workers: USCIS had proposed a 201 percent increase from $460 to $1,385. In the final rule USCIS set the fee for nonprofits at $695 (51 percent increase).
Fees for I-129 Petitions for O-1 workers: USCIS had proposed a 129 percent increase, from $460 to $1,055. In the final rule USCIS set the fee for nonprofits at $530 (15 percent increase).
A full fee schedule can be found in Table 1 of the preamble to the final rule.
In addition to the aforementioned changes, USCIS finalized its proposal to revise the premium processing timeframe interpretation from calendar days to business days. Currently, premium processing allows petitioners to receive an adjudicative action on their case within 15 calendar days. Changing the interpretation to business days will add nearly a week to the existing adjudication time.
Update on Clarification Efforts by Higher Education
In response to the USCIS final fee rule’s reliance on the Internal Revenue Code’s definition of a nonprofit organization, specifically 26 U.S.C. 501(c)(3), higher education associations are actively seeking clarification from USCIS. These efforts aim to understand how the fee adjustments will impact public universities and colleges that do not fall under the 501(c)(3) classification. The goal is to ensure that the unique status of higher education institutions is recognized and adequately addressed in the implementation of the fee rule.
On January 31, CUPA-HR submitted a letter in response to the Bipartisan, Bicameral Congressional Paid Leave Working Group’s Request for Information on federal paid leave policy. The letter responds to some of the 10 questions posed by the Working Group to inform them of the role the federal government can play in creating a national paid leave policy.
CUPA-HR’s letter answers questions on the role of the federal government in incentivizing paid leave, the recommended framework for a federal policy, how to avoid unintended distortions resulting from a paid leave framework, and existing research on the impact of paid leave on job satisfaction and recruitment and retention efforts. In our response, CUPA-HR takes the position that the role of the federal government is to ensure that any federal law or program requires harmonization across federal, state, and local leave laws. The letter recommends a framework in which the federal government establishes national criteria for certain aspects of paid leave policies, including tracking and recordkeeping requirements, while granting states and localities leeway to go beyond the federal requirements for other aspects, such as the types of leave that qualify for wage replacement, the duration of such leave, and the wage replacement level.
The Paid Leave Working Group issued the RFI in December 2023 and sought diverse stakeholder input on the issue of a federal paid leave policy. Comments were due on January 31, 2023. CUPA-HR will continue to monitor for any updates on paid leave as Congress continues to look for a bipartisan solution.
Ready for a conversation about educational technology, artificial intelligence, and personal academic websites? The 2024 season of The Social Academic is here.
Meet my featured interview guest, Director of Educational Research Technology at New York University, Dr. Elizabeth McAplin. Read, watch, or listen to this episode of The Social Academic.
Jennifer: Hi everyone, my name is Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to the new season of The Social Academic. This blog, podcast, and YouTube channel is about managing your online presence in academia. Today we’re gonna be talking about teaching and educational resources.
I’m delighted to introduce my guest to you, Dr. Elizabeth McAplin, who is Director of Educational Research Technology at New York University. Elizabeth, thanks so much for joining me today. Would you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your role at NYU?
Elizabeth: Sure. I’m Director of Educational Technology Research at NYU. I’ve been in this role a little over 7 years now, and at NYU for almost 10 years. I did my PhD at NYU and a MA in Educational Technology at NYU so I have a very long history with NYU.
When I was a student there and worked, I had multiple hats: student, alumni, faculty, and administrator.
Jennifer: Wow.
Elizabeth: Yup, all of them. I was the face of NYU. My role there specifically is to collaborate with faculty who are looking to make pedagogical changes to their courses usually involving some sort of media or technology.
We had a very large provostial push years ago to encourage faculty to start using technology, trying it out. And seeing how well that could enhance their courses and make things better and easier for themselves as well as their students.
I’ll work with them in part sometimes to develop a technology. Sometimes it might be a virtual reality project that they might want to use in their course or program. As well as conduct scholarly research to see how well that is impacting student learning in their classroom or program. We aim to publish those findings as well.
I’m a central resource. I work with all schools and departments at NYU.
Creating her university-hosted personal academic website
Jennifer: That is amazing. Because you’ve been at NYU for so long, you were a student there, you’ve worked there, and now you’re a director there. I’m curious. You have an internal personal academic website [hosted by NYU]. Is that something you created when you were a student? Or, in your newer role?
Elizabeth: No, I created it during a time when I was both a student and in my current role. I was finishing my PhD while I was still a Director.
I created it not for the purpose of my own portfolio site. I do have a presence at NYU that shows my service within the structure of Research, Instruction, and Technology which is my department, within the larger umbrella of NYU IT. [That presence] does get a little bit lost sometimes in that filter. But it is there. It doesn’t describe me personally, it describes my service to faculty and to the university. It’s not focused on me per se.
The portfolio site is to showcase some of the work I’ve done in the past, mainly at NYU. It does also list my CV, prior work experience as well as teaching experience and the like. In the event life changes, I like to have something available and ready to show.
Jennifer: I love that. When I was exploring your site it was fun for me to see the different types of videos you were posting about educational technology projects you were working on and collaborating with faculty. I like that even though this is a portfolio site, it sounds like maybe a ‘just in case’ site? That it was helping me prepare for this interview and get to know a little bit more about you. At what point did you create that website?
Elizabeth: That was many years ago. It’s hosted through NYU. NYU provides faculty a WordPress service just for that. Sometimes they use it to create a portfolio for grants they’ve received or want to receive. They can provide that to their grant funders. It’s another way to showcase the work that gets done.
It’s an internally managed WordPress hosting site. It’s not something I pay for externally. All faculty have that available to them [at NYU].
Jennifer: Did NYU encourage you to create a website? Or was it something you learned about and then decided to make yourself?
Elizabeth: I think when I knew the service was available, and I was teaching there as well, I decided it was a good idea and why not? I mean, if it’s free and I don’t have to pay for it, there’s no non-incentive not to do it, haha.
Videos for your personal academic website portfolio
Jennifer: Your portfolio had a nice list of videos where you’ve collaborated with faculty to create resources and technologies for their classrooms. Can you tell me about one of the videos that you were excited to share on your website?
Elizabeth: Before I was a Director of Research, I was a Director that oversaw a very large team of instructional designers and media producers. Our role was to create a lot of this content for faculty to be used in their courses. I learned a great deal about each faculty member I worked with and their particular expertise. It’s kind of a wonderful way to learn more, because I love learning. And to create and produce those videos.
Most of those [videos] were created with a team of people. They would be scripted, prepared, and imagery selected for them ahead of time. They were very well planned out videos that were used in their courses.
They’re just fascinating and visually engaging pieces of work. We did a lot of things! A lot of interactive pieces: videos, games, simulations, etc.
Jennifer: That is so cool! And I love that there’s support at NYU for faculty who are looking to introduce those newer technologies into their pedagogy, into their teaching.
Artificial intelligence in the university classroom
Jennifer: I’m curious. What technologies are faculty curious about exploring? I’m coming from literature as a field. There’s newer augmented reality [AR] or virtual reality [VR] technology that can be introduced into that. Most faculty just aren’t aware of it. So I’m curious, what are faculty at NYU curious about learning now?
Elizabeth: Artificial intelligence. It’s a really big topic right now because it has so many unknowns.
I think there’s still a lot of faculty that are hesitant to use a lot of technology. I think since COVID when faculty had to go online during that time period, that was a big change for them. It did kind of give them that opportunity to learn more about technologies they could use moving forward.
There’s giving a Zoom presentation, learning how to present, use technologies within Zoom for their classes, making hybrid courses or fully online versions of them. Learning how to create better videos for their courses.
Not relying so much on lecture as being used for the time in the classroom anymore. Pulling the lecture out, making that as a video or something, and using the classroom for more discussion or interactive uses of the time with their students.
Jennifer: That is so cool.
Elizabeth: It’s such a precious amount of time.
And then, there’s a handful of faculty very interested in virtual reality and augmented reality. Those are mainly in the sciences and medical fields.
And now, artificial intelligence is the biggest buzz at the university. How are faculty going to manage using artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, in a productive and constructive way as opposed to ways that students want to write their papers with.
Jennifer: It’s kind of like a shift in how we think about artificial intelligence in the classroom from fear-based to how can it be a part of it in a meaningful way?
What are your thoughts on it? How are you feeling about artificial intelligence and pedagogy?
Elizabeth: I think there can be a lot of great uses of it, as long as it’s well planned out. There are efficiencies to things like using ChatGPT that we didn’t have before. That can be wonderful.
Even doing literature reviews and such through ChatGPT can help speed up that process. We didn’t have to go to a library before to do a lot of research on articles because now they’re all digitized. We can do that through an online library system.
It just gets a little bit closer to making things more efficient. Maybe we’ll have more doctoral students coming out of it. I’m not sure.
There’s always going to be pros and cons for whatever technology comes before us. We have to acknowledge it. We have to understand what are the risks? What are the affordances? And work with that. That’s always going to be the case.
Just like with a calculator, one of those tools that came out and people said, “You won’t have to learn math anymore because you can just use a calculator.” Regardless of all that, yes, we will still turn to our calculators to make sure we’re right in our math.
It’s not a new problem, and it’s not a new risk. I think some of it comes down to making sure when we’re using these tools, we’re not also putting our students at risk like with identifiable information or grades, things like that. It’s a constant conversation to have with faculty on best uses and practices of these technologies and tools. And to keep monitoring those risks and the things that are gonna come up. They’re going to come up. They always will.
When students get very stressed out and are under pressure, they’re more apt to want to cheat. Or have something, or someone, help them get the work done. So reviewing how much work we’re imposing on our students, or understanding that their social lives are taking a precedence they need to dial back to focus on their academic careers. It’s always a balance: is it the student’s problem? Or, is it our problem? And how do we find a happy medium in between?
Jennifer: I really like that. It’s a beautiful point. When I was a student my parents had just passed away. I was working so hard. There were times I struggled to keep up. My teachers’ empathy for understanding what I was going through, even just a little bit made it feel like a safe place in the classroom, and made me excited to learn (even if I was a little bit behind in some areas). So I loved what you just said.
Which of the technologies you just share with me are you most excited about? You talked about AR, VR, artificial intelligence, games. Which of those kinds of forms of teaching excites you?
Elizabeth: I’ve been working so much in virtual reality recently in the past few years, so I guess that’s the most exciting.
I’ve been working with 1 faculty member for almost 10 years. We just keep evolving resources for her course, which is really large, almost 400 students in her course. The virtual reality project we had for her, we keep trying to find ways to improve the experience overall. We’ve just gotten into working with faculty in the School of Engineering on how to create custom haptics for that virtual reality simulation.
Jennifer: Would you explain haptics for us?
Elizabeth: A virtual reality out of the box headset comes with the headset and 2 hand controllers. When you’re trying to learn a procedure that involves medical instruments like a syringe or a scalpel if you’re doing surgery, you want to know and feel what that device is like as you are performing the procedure. It’s not just cognitive. It’s tactile. It’s procedural. It has multiple learning and practice components to it.
An out of the box hand controller is not particularly authentic to actually holding a syringe and actually practicing learning that procedure. Working with engineers, they developed a 3D printed syringe and connected that to a haptic device that now students can pick up and actually feel something that’s more authentic to that experience as they are in a virtual reality simulation in going through those procedural steps.
It’s never going to replace working on an actual patient. We’re trying to prepare them to get as close as possible to a real patient experience before they work with a patient because there are so many risks involved in working with a real patient. So that’s the impetus behind that. It’s an ongoing process. We keep learning and we keep trying to make things better. That’s for us, part of the learning process as well. And that’s what’s exciting.
Jennifer: That sounds so exciting. And I love it’s been an ongoing project and exploration over 10 years to improve the teaching and tools in that course.
Jennifer on sharing the resources you create online
Jennifer: One of the things I wanted to chat about for faculty who might be listening to this, is that when you do create educational resources or tools like this, it would be great to share on your personal academic website and on social media.
These tools don’t just help your students and other faculty at your university. They might help or inspire faculty across the world. I want you to know when you do take time to share those educational resources that you’ve made in a new way, in a way that’s accessible for people not directly in your classroom or talking with you at a conference 1-on-1. You can actually help more people with the hard work you’ve already done just by sharing it.
There’s so many things you can share on your personal website related to teaching. I thought I’d list a few for those listening: your syllabi, course descriptions, any videos, or tools like PDF resources or guides. That can go on your personal academic website. If you find that it’s helpful for you or your students, I’ve had professor clients who actually create lists of internal resources and external resources at their university that they regularly share with not just one class, but multiple. Putting that on their personal website creates a kind of home for it where your students can go to find those resources when it makes sense for them.
I want you to know that your website can be a portfolio. And that portfolio can be for the job market, it can be for grants like Dr. McAplin said. It can also be for your students. There’s so many ways to share the amazing teaching and educating you do online. I want you to not hide from that if you have resources to share.
Jennifer: Dr. McAplin, why did you actually choose to share the videos on your website? I think that’s the step a lot of people are missing. They create things, but they don’t always decide to share them. What prompted you to actually share the videos and the resources you helped create?
Elizabeth: We’re proud of the work that was done. We want to show what’s possible. We’re not creating things for National Geographic or some NOVA high-production value thing. It doesn’t have to be that. But we took as much time and care as we possibly could with very little budget at all to make these resources. So it’s just to show examples of what’s possible and change a little bit the narrative. We get comfortable lecturing, but when we don’t have a visual idea for our students for what we’re talking about as we’re talking about it…we don’t want to cause a cognitive dissonance with that information either. Thinking carefully about the words with the imagery or short clips of documentaries or films that go along with what we’re saying to describe as examples of what we’re talking about. As long as they’re relevant and not overdoing it, I think it’s a good way to connect what we say with our eyes. We process these two things simultaneously, so we have that cognitive ability to do so, and we should take advantage of that ability.
What we try to encourage with faculty and to try and make it a more enriching experience for our students.
Jennifer: That is beautiful. I’m so glad we got to talk about this today. Elizabeth, is there anything else you’d like to add about your website, or about the amazing work you do at NYU?
Elizabeth: I list [on my website] that I do workshops at the university. I get asked to do talks within the university. Those are important things to share, like this conversation. We have something at NYU called Teach Talks through the Provost department and there’s some other departments that do similar things, that connect with faculty to talk about things like their assessment practices, pedagogical practices. We haven’t really had one that talks about their research. That might be a missing link we could try to fill, which is more what my area is, on the research end.
These are great resources for faculty to connect with other faculty, to learn about more ways to do things, to inspire them to do things differently, and to take a leadership role forward in that department. That’s more or less what I provide on my website.
Jennifer: That’s amazing. I’m so glad you have your website. And, that I was able to explore it so we could have this conversation today.
It makes such a difference when people are open to sharing a little bit more about themselves. So I’m happy you were open to coming on The Social Academic to talk with me. Anything else you’d like to add?
Elizabeth: If anyone has any questions, I’m available to answer them.
Jennifer: Wonderful. Well thank you so much for listening to this new episode of The Social Academic. Be sure to share it with a friend if you think they’d find it helpful. And, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode.
I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. I’ve been in conversation with Dr. Elizabeth McAplin. I’m so excited to share this episode with you.
Elizabeth: Thank you Jennifer for asking me to participate.
Dr. Elizabeth McAlpin is the Director of Educational Technology Research at NYU Information Technology. Her team assists faculty in scholarly research on teaching and learning strategies when enhanced with technology to improve student learning. She holds an undergraduate degree from Denison University, an Ed.M. in instructional technology and media from Teachers College, and an M.A. and Ph.D in educational communication and technology from New York University. In addition to her full-time position, she also teaches as an adjunct at NYU. Her interests include educational technology research, effective educational design, innovative pedagogy and assessment, and educational technology and media for all kinds of learning experiences.
Enrollment, as I like to say, is complicated. But that never stopped anyone from asking a question like, “How does enrollment look?”
To help answer, I downloaded IPEDS data of enrollment from 2009 to 2022, breaking it out by full-time and part-time, graduate and undergraduate, and gender, and put it into three different views, below, using the tabs across the top. As always, you need to be a bit careful jumping to any conclusions about this: There is no easy (or even any hard) way I know of to account for the way Penn State has named and renamed itself over time, and changed the way it reported data, for instance, so anomalies will always show up there.
But for the most part, this information is very accurate.
The first view shows summary data. This is just to get topline information about trends in US higher education enrollments over time. Choose the type of enrollment at top right, then filter down to the specific categories you’d like to see. You cannot break anything by interacting.
The second view can be a little messy, but is handy for my admissions and enrollment management colleagues. It shows market share of every institution in a state; you can only select one state at a time, and the view starts with Washington, where you see UW and WSU dominate. But what if you want to look at just private colleges? One click will get you there (and the percent of total will recalculate to only that segment). The same thing applies if you want to look at the enrollment of full-time men at community colleges in Tennessee. Just click until you get what you need.
The third view started out mostly as fun, but I learned a few things from it, which is always nice. Some examples are in this Twitter thread (which is a series of sequential tweets tied together.)
This blog is mostly a public service to parents, students, and high school counselors, who should always browse to your heart’s content and consider it free. But if you use this in your work, you can support my hosting, computer, and software costs by buying me a coffee at this link.
As always, let me know what you find interesting, compelling, or just hard to believe.
Progress in both representation and equitable pay for women and people of color remained sluggish in most roles on college and university campuses in academic year 2022-23, according to the newest data. Through several interactive graphics representing years of research, CUPA-HR highlights the progress that has been made and the disparities that persist. The data track gender and racial composition as well as pay of administrative, faculty, professional, and staff roles, collected from CUPA-HR’s signature surveys.
While the representation of women and people of color across all roles has steadily increased, inequity remains, especially when it comes to compensation for women and people of color. However, there were some notable areas of progress when it comes to compensation. Asian women and men of color (except for Native American/Alaskan Native men) in administrative roles saw better pay equity than most other groups.
Administrators
The share of racial and ethnic minorities in administrative roles continued to grow over the past decade, but gaps in both representation and pay remained steady. This is especially true for women of color, who represented less than 11% of these roles and, for the most part, received lower salaries than White men.
In 2022-23, people of color made up 18.7% of administrators, up from 12.9% in 2011-12. Although the proportion of people of color in higher ed administrator positions grew steadily over the last decade, these increases have not kept pace with the rate at which minorities are obtaining graduate degrees.
No improvement was shown in pay disparities for most women administrators. All female administrators except for Asian women received lower salaries than White men. Conversely, men of color, except for Native American/Alaskan Native men, were paid salaries greater than those of White men.
The Administrators in Higher Education Survey collects data on administrator positions that manage a higher ed institution or a division within it.
There are two notable findings regarding faculty composition. First, more women faculty were represented in non-tenure-track roles than in tenure-track roles in 2022-23. Second, with each increase in rank, the proportions of women faculty and faculty of color decreased for both tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty. Taken together, this means that women were over-represented in the lowest-paying and lowest-ranking positions.
Pay gaps within rank persist, particularly for women faculty at the professor level, regardless of tenure status. These gaps are most notable for female professors of color in non-tenure-track positions. Pay gaps for assistant and associate professors have narrowed over time, particularly for tenure-track faculty.
The factor that most impacts faculty pay is promotion to a higher rank, which is often the only time faculty receive significant increases in salary. When there is bias in promoting women and faculty of color to successive ranks, as our data continued to show, this results in career earnings gaps that far exceed what is often detected in pay equity studies within rank for a given year.
The Faculty in Higher Education Survey collects data on tenure-track faculty positions and non-tenure-track teaching faculty positions.
In academic year 2022-23, women of all races and ethnicities were paid less than their male counterparts in professional roles, while women’s representation increased from 58% to 61% across all professional positions since 2016-17. The growth is due to slight increases in the representation of women of color, from 13.1% in 2016-17 to 15.7% in 2022-23.
Representation by gender and race/ethnicity varied widely by position. Human resources had the greatest share of women professionals, with 82% being women, including 28% women of color. Information technology had the lowest percentage of professional women (27%), and librarians and development/fundraising professionals had the lowest representation of professionals of color (14%).
While pay was more equitable for most groups (apart from Hispanic/Latina women and men of two or more races), pay disparities persisted. Women of all races and ethnicities were paid less than their male counterparts. In addition, Hispanic/Latino men, Native Hawaiian men, and men of two or more races were paid less than White men.
The Professionals in Higher Education Survey collects data on positions in specific functional areas in higher ed institutions, such as academic or student services, that usually require a baccalaureate degree.
Staff roles continued to have a higher representation of people of color than any other higher ed employee group last year. Staff also continued to be the lowest-paying positions in higher ed, with women particularly hard hit by pay disparities.
In 2022-23, women of color represented about 19% of all higher ed staff, and men of color represent about 13% of all higher ed staff — a modest increase since 2016-17. Skilled craft employees were the least racially diverse, a finding that has persisted across the past six years. Notably, skilled craft staff are among the highest-paid staff positions.
Since 2016-17, women were paid consistently and considerably less than White men. Pay equity for American Indian/Alaska Native women, Asian women, and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander women was better in 2022-23 than in 2016-17. Pay equity was the same or worse in 2022-23 than in 2016-17 for Black women, Hispanic/Latina women, women of two or more races, and White women. Men of color fared considerably better than women of color when it came to pay equity.
The Staff in Higher Education Survey collects data on positions that are generally non-exempt and do not require a college degree.
CUPA-HR is the recognized authority on compensation surveys for higher education, with its workforce surveys designed by higher ed HR professionals for higher ed HR professionals and other campus leaders.
