Latino faculty cite ‘gross’ pay disparities at UT-Austin
In report, Hispanic professors say they are facing discrimination, underrepresentation
Texas education leaders are discussing how to address the findings of a recent report that detailed “gross disparities” and “discrimination” in compensation, leadership opportunities and other measurements for Hispanic professors at the state’s flagship university.
The 188-page “Hispanic Equity Report,” released last fall by a group of eight professors at the University of Texas at Austin, found that UT faculty of Latino origin earn thousands of dollars less than their white peers at all levels of professorships. The gaps occur even “after taking account of field, rank and scholarship,” the report says.
“We found that Hispanics are grossly underpaid and underrepresented in positions of leadership in a university that makes diversity one of its central missions,” said Alberto Martínez, a history professor and chair of the Independent Equity Committee that produced the report.
Hispanic professors say they have long known about the inequalities and underrepresentation. The university’s Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, for example, has had 13 directors since its 1940 founding; none was of Hispanic or Latin American origin. The institute is named after a Hispanic alumna who endowed it with $15 million.
“That’s simply grotesque,” said Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, a UT history professor. “That’s like having a prestigious center of African American studies (that has) never
had an African American director; it would be unthinkable.”
But, he added, “that’s where we are.”
UT officials recognize the problem but disagree on the scale of salary disparities.
Speaking at a recent Faculty Council meeting, Gregory Fenves, the president of UT Austin, said that a university council on racial and ethnic equity and diversity completed the first phase of a study on Latino faculty pay and found issues similar to those in the equity committee report.
“There were some differences especially in interpretations of data,” Fenves said, according to an official transcript of the meeting. “But there clearly are inequity issues.” He said the council would be “working through this information very, very diligently.”
Joey Williams, a spokesman for UT’s executive vice president and provost, stressed that the university is “strongly committed to further understanding this potential inequity and fixing it.”
Salary gaps
For the analysis, the committee used methodology similar to the Gender Equity Report of 2008 that prompted changes to address disparities between female and male scholars, according to the document.
“One of the most alarming discoveries is that the inequities grow and get larger the longer a Hispanic professor is at UT,” Martínez said.
The most significant compensation gaps in net terms were found among full professors, where Latinos were paid approximately $25,300 less on average than their Anglo peers in 2017, the focus year of the report. Assistant professors faced a gap of roughly $19,600 on average, and the difference was about $10,600 for associate professors.
The report analyzed data from different sources, including the Texas Tribune’s Government Salaries Explorer, which publishes payroll information from state public entities responding to open records requests.
Another major problem is that
“Hispanic women are the most underpaid (professors) in the university in almost every category, and they are extremely underrepresented,” Martínez said.
Hispanic women who are full professors at UT were paid $37,100 less on average than white men with the same tenure status; $15,800 less than equivalent white women; and $10,200 less than men of Latino origin. The report found a similar pattern for assistant professors, where white men were paid 44 percent more than Latinas.
Williams, the spokesman for the provost, said the university’s analysis found “the difference (in compensation) is a little over 3 percent for full and associate professors favoring white faculty.” He said that in some job classifications, Latina professors even earn more than their white peers.
He said “that pattern is reversed with a much larger difference favoring our Latina over white assistant professors and not much of a difference at all when we compare salaries across races for assistant tenure track professors who are men.”
“Regardless, this difference favoring white over Latinx faculty at the senior ranks needs to be investigated further,” he said.
Defining the problem
Gloria González-López, a sociology professor at UT, said race and gender are also factors.
“I use the concept of ‘academic doméstica’ (domestic servant) to describe this, where Latina professors do a lot of services for which they are not paid or paid worse than anybody else” in academia, she said.
Part of the burden that faculty members of color have in majoritywhite educational institutions is a sense of responsibility to serve as mentors and role models, frequently helping disadvantaged students who are first-generation college students, González-López said.
“A basic tenet of education across the lines, whether you’re talking about kindergarten kids or college students, is that in order for students to learn, they need to feel connected to the classroom and the faculty, and they are more likely to feel that with someone who shares their background,” said Natasha Warikoo, a Harvard University professor and author of the new book “The Diversity Bargain: And Other Dilemmas of Race, Admissions, and Meritocracy at Elite Universities.”
The overwhelming majority of full-time professors at UT — 80 percent — are white. By contrast, only 7 percent are Hispanic even as students of Hispanic ethnic origin are 23 percent of the undergraduate population and 11 percent of graduate students.
At colleges and universities where there are more Latino students than faculty, such as at UT, “students are going to go disproportionately to those professors, who, in turn, are disproportionately asked to serve on committees,” Warikoo said. That’s in part because of the background and cultural knowledge that they bring to campuses.
Fenves has stressed that diversity and inclusion are priorities, according to his official bio. Under Fenves, the university successfully defended its admissions practices before the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2016 Fisher vs. University of Texas at Austin case, winning and consolidating the right to use race as a valid criterion in its so-called holistic admission policies.
University leaders say they want a more diverse faculty. “As we explore improving faculty equity issues, we also want to seek ways to improve the supply of future Hispanic professors through graduate opportunities,” said Williams, the UT spokesman.
Hispanic professors say they frequently hear the argument that there are not enough Latinos with graduate degrees to increase faculty representation.
“That’s a convenient, false argument for a university like UT,” Cañizares-Esguerra said. He contended that “this is the wealthiest institution (of higher education) in the country after Harvard, capable of attracting talented (Latino) professors from anywhere.”
The equity committee’s analysis also found that of the 130 deans, vice deans and associate and assistant deans at UT-Austin, only 7.7 percent are Latino; none is a Hispanic woman. The underrepresentation of Latinos is a pattern observed at all levels of leadership, endowments and recognition, according to the report.
“It’s ironic that in this state where almost 40 percent (of residents) are Latinos, we are having these inequalities at the public state university,” González-López said.
What comes next?
Among other remedial actions, the provost’s office has asked UT Austin deans to review how leadership and committee roles are assigned, Williams said. And Provost Maurie McInnis recently created a group of deans to pilot new approaches to address issues of salary equity, diverse faculty recruitment and retention, departmental governance and academic unit climate.
State Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, DAustin, said he’s contacted Fenves’ office and wants a meeting as soon as possible to discuss the equity report and disparities.
The report is “quite compelling, particularly the disparity in pay,” said Rodriguez, who is policy chair of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus. “It seems that the University of Texas can do a much better job in incorporating more Latinos and Latinas, not only as professors but as deans and higher levels of academia.”
Martínez, the equity committee chair, said the group will continue pushing for changes at the university.
“I don’t think these are intentional biases that are executed by individuals who consciously dislike Hispanics,” he said. “But whether these patterns are intentional or not, the consequences are similar. We feel excluded because we are.”