Understanding Minority Ethnic
Flight from UK Higher Education
Dr Kalwant Bhopal, Dr Hazel Brown
and June Jackson.
K.Bhopal@soton.ac.uk
Introduction
• Race Relations Amendment Act (2000); Equalities Act
(2010); Athena SWAN; Race Equality Charter (ECU).
• Increase in BME students at HEIs (HEFCE 2012-13);
Indian and Chinese students more likely to have a degree
compared to White British (University of Manchester
March 2014)
• Inequalities continue to persist despite policy changes and
changes in student body (Bhopal and Jackson, 2013;
Pilkington, 2013); White applicants three times more likely
to secure a professorial post compared to BME candidates
(UCU, 2012).
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BME academics in UK HE - statistics
14% minority ethnic population (England and Wales, Census
2011)
HESA Data (2014)
In 2012/13 out of a total of 17,880 professors:
85 were Black (less than 1%)
950 were Asian (5%)
365 were ‘other’ (including mixed) (2%)
Overwhelming majority White 15,200 (85%)
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Representation and experiences
• Greater focus to date on gender rather than ethnicity
• Focus overall on students (widening participation,
internationalisation), less focus on staff
• Glass ceiling/ivory ceiling
• ‘Being ruled out for promotion; not being encouraged to apply’
(ECU, 2011, p.34)
• ‘If BME staff were represented in the professoriate in the same
proportion as they are among non-professorial academic staff
there would be 2,130 professors of BME origin. So, there is a gap
of 935 BME’ (UCU, 2012, p.5).
• Hyper-surveillance, ‘other’, intersectionalities
Deem and Morley, 2006; Hey et al, 2011; Morley, 2013; Pilkington,
2013; Puwar, 2004.
Bhopal and Jackson (2013)
• Some doubts about equality in starting salary/point on
scale
• Higher threshold and filtering process (unwritten;
unspoken) regarding promotion applications
• REF: ‘neutralising ethnicity’/subjective biases
• ‘Outsider’ status
• Having to ‘fit in’: dress, communication styles (class, gender
and race).
Research
• Funded by Equality Challenge Unit
• To understand reasons for overseas HE migration and
explore ethnic differences;
• To understand the push and pull factors which contribute to
actual or potential overseas HE migration and whether these
factors vary by ethnicity.
• To establish how UK HEIs can retain BME academics and
attract back those who have left.
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Methodology
Questionnaire survey distributed to all HEIs in UK (via ECU
and our own contacts) until early April 2014
41 in-depth interviews (14 UK; 12 with previous overseas
experience; 15 based overseas).
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Survey Responses
1,201 responses of these:
146 (12.5%) BME and 1,024 (87.5%)White
504 (43%) female and 662 (57%) male
761 (65%) aged 40 and over, 417 (35%) under 40
12.4% self-identified as disabled
8.4% self-identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or other
732 (74%) in ‘old’ universities, 211 (21%) post-1992
One third of participants had overseas work experience
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Positive elements of UK HE
• Having a full-time permanent post
• Good pension
• Treated with equity
• Co-operative working environment
• Family friendly policies
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Push factors away from the UK – recruitment
• You have got to be ‘twice as good’ as white counterparts
• Lack of transparency/ “who you know”
• Perceived as not the ‘safe’ option [in the UK recruitment
process]
• Invisibility/not expected to be in the space
- I arrived for the interview and I sat there, waiting and waiting. This
man came [professor]. He came in, looked around, looked at me,
walked out. After five minutes he came in, looked around the room, you
know, you wait like a waiting room, and then he walked out again. And
then I heard him say to the secretary, because at that time I was a Dr,
he said: where’s Dr [name]? And then I heard her mumble something. 10
And I saw his face turn red. And I thought: that’s it…I had had enough.
Push factors away from the UK: Barriers to promotion
Career ‘hits the buffers’
Race as a factor in who is encouraged, or not, by senior
colleagues – isolating and demotivating impact
Prospects limited and promotion ‘an illusion’
Lack of transparency – ‘nebulous’ criteria
Feeling of being judged more harshly/different criteria
introduced
Work on race, ethnicity, seen as a deficit
REF – recognition of publications outside the ‘Anglo-American’
world?
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Pull factors to overseas - Academic
• To work temporarily (unable to get work in UK – so aim to
gain experience then return)
• Supportive environment for BME scholars – and examples
of others going overseas (permanent or secondment);
positive messages from overseas institutions
• Intellectually treated as an equal – credibility and status
given to BME staff
• Institutional space, and institutional support for black
studies
• Supportive environment for research (no RAE or REF)
• Less of an administrative burden
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Pull factors to overseas - Lifestyle
• Quality of lifestyle; better opportunities for family
• Culture “Whereas in the USA we go out to dinners together,
and there is always a sense of wanting to talk to everyone in
the corridors, that culture is one that I value and like”
• Better weather; travel; learning different languages
• Giving something back, to make a difference (e.g. Africa;
China; India)
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What would attract back or retain BME academics in
UK HE sector? 1
• A sense that BME academics would be welcomed and valued –
that academic life has become more diverse – a critical mass
• Recognise BME academics as repositories of knowledge, not just
objects of study
• Greater visibility of BME people in academic and decision
making roles
• Problematizing, and having a set of institutional frameworks that
facilitate doing something about racism and lack of BME
academics in senior positions
• Acknowledge unspoken entitlement of certain people;
acknowledge areas of disadvantage – micro-aggressions/day to
day experiences of minority ethnic people which accumulate
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What would attract back or retain BME
academics in UK HE sector? 2
• A specific recognition of and valuing of diversity (rather than
asking people to ‘fit in’) in staff and in curricula
• Development of Black Studies; avoidance of London-centrism (in
Black Studies)
• Opportunities to be a visiting lecturer/professor/exchange/
examiner in UK – maintain connections: “those things would
begin to pull you back”
• Positively identify and encourage BME candidates and potential
candidates (avoiding tokenism) – make an active effort;
transparency in recruitment
• Networking/mentoring/training
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Questions arising
• Are we achieving a greater understanding of the
experiences of minority ethnic academics?
• Do we have practical recommendations for easily
achievable action on what would attract/retain minority
ethnic academics?
• Participant saturation: same people contribute to each
research project. How do we capture the views of those not
wanting to be labelled as BME?
• What are the priority areas?
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