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CHANGE NEEDED: Report finds only 17 black female professors in UK universities

THERE ARE only 17 black female professors employed in UK universities, a recent report has revealed.

The report by race equality charity, the Runnymede Trust found that overall, 92.4 per cent of professors are white, while just 0.49 per cent are black and that only 15 black academics are in senior management roles.

One of the contributors to the report Andrew Pilkington, professor of Sociology at Northampton University, describes how, for the last decade or so, ‘the primary concern of widening participation strategies was social class’.

This means that the needs of BME students have often been overlooked by policymakers and certain issues neglected, in particular the fact that BME students continue to be under-represented in more prestigious institutions.

It also found it is much harder for black and Asian students to get into the country’s most selective universities even if they have the same A-level grades as their white counterparts.

Dr Omar Khan, the trust’s director, said: “Evidence that white British students with lower A-level results are much more likely to get into elite British universities than Asian students with higher A-level results suggests there is unconscious bias if not positive discrimination in favour of white university applicants.

“The obvious question is – if the racial inequalities persist across every measurement of outcomes in higher education, will black and ethnic minority students continue to pay £9,000 a year for a much poorer experience than their classmates?”