Report Documents Discrimination at Ivy League Universities

"The (Un)Changing Face of the Ivy League," a report conducted by a graduate student group at Yale University, found that women and minorities at Ivy League schools have made little progress breaking into the tenure track faculty ranks, and are instead becoming a larger part of the growing group of highly qualified but non tenure track faculty and staff. The report uncovered a two-tier system in the universities in which women and minorities are concentrated in unstable, poorly compensated teaching and research positions while the secure, higher status, better paid, tenured and tenure-rack positions are held mainly by white males. Ivy League universities hired 433 professors into tenure-track jobs in 2003, but women received only 150 (34 percent) of these positions. In addition, women gained only 25 percent of the 117 tenured full professorates granted that year.

“It is likely that the sex and race discrimination will continue as long as the hiring and tenure processes remain opaque, secretive and idiosyncratic among and even within universities,” said Sue Klein, Ed.D, education equity director of the Feminist Majority Foundation. “This makes it extremely difficult to prove sex or race discrimination under civil rights laws such as Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments or Titles VI and VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.” The report was endorsed by women’s rights, civil rights, and labor organizations, including the Feminist Majority Foundation.

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Media Resources: New York Times 3/1/05, “The (Un)Changing Face of the Ivy League” report 2/05

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