Combating promotion and tenure bias against Black and Hispanic faculty

Phys.org  October 4, 2024 The underrepresented minority (URM) faculty face challenges in many domains of academia, from university admissions to grant applications. A team of researchers in the US (University of Houston, University of California Merced, Texas Southern University, Texas A&M University, Louisiana State University) examined whether this translates to promotion and tenure (P&T) decisions. Data from five US universities on 1,571 faculty members’ P&T decisions showed that URM faculty received 7% more negative votes and were 44% less likely to receive unanimous votes from P&T committees. A double standard in how scholarly productivity was rewarded was also observed, with […]

Study calls for responsible academic research assessment

Phys.org  October 4, 2024 In their study a team of researchers in the UK challenged mainstream thinking that academic judges are best suited for evaluating research outputs. It aimed to inspire methods to utilize metrics effectively, considering the diverse communities requiring clear evaluation criteria. The research team used data from the UK’s 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF) to examine the interplay between metrics and expert judgment in evaluating research outputs from 108 institutions, covering 13,973 publications in business and management—one of the evaluation’s largest and most heterogeneous fields. They showed that the strong association between journal rankings and expert evaluations […]

Researchers call for a new approach to studying academic progress

Phys.org  May 2, 2023 The scientific study of higher education has not yet matured to adequately model the complexity of the task of developing, and producing the next generation of scientists, artists, political leaders, and informed citizens. How universities structure their curriculums, and how students make progress through them, differ across fields of study, educational institutions, and nation-states. To this day, a “pipeline” metaphor shapes analyses and discourse of academic progress, especially in STEM, even though it is an inaccurate representation. A team of researchers in the US (Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan, Texas A&M University, UC […]