By Thomas Peele and Daniel J. Willis, EdSource, March 1, 2021
At a time of renewed focus on race and equity across academia, the nation’s largest higher-education system is saddled with a byzantine and failing strategy to diversify its teaching ranks to more closely reflect its student body.
California’s 115 community colleges, serving a diverse student body of more than 1.2 million full-time students, rely on a little-known system of state fines to improve racial and ethnic diversity among faculty.
However, the fines are generated only when the colleges, which are organized into 73 districts, fail to employ enough full-time professors. The fines, which totaled $1.2 million in 2019, are charged to the districts based on a formula established in state law to favor full-time faculty.
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