Are Racial/Ethnic PhD Holders Disadvantaged? Assessing Relative Income and Promotional (Dis)advantages

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  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 06: Race, Gender and Careers

Abstract

Though traditionally marginalized racial/ethnic groups are known to face many barriers in obtaining the necessary human capital for upward social mobility, it is unclear the extent to which they face similar challenges once they have overcome these barriers once obtaining an advanced education or being hired in a job market in which they must compete against native-born Whites. To assess this question, we develop hypotheses based on the selectivity and meritocracy theses, both of which predict parity across racial/ethnic groups once the initial barriers of human capital and getting hired have been overcome. Using data from the 2017 Survey of Doctoral Participants, we test for inequalities in income and the probability of being tenured among PhD holders in faculty positions at 4-year universities and how university size serves to soften these disadvantages. Though university size is a positive predictor in general for income, our findings suggest it has additional benefits for Hispanic and Asian immigrant men relative to native-born White men and for Black immigrant women relative to their native-born White counterparts. In addition, our multinomial logit models provide evidence that immigrant minority groups generally face more disadvantages in the relative log odds of becoming tenured professors when working in small universities compared to those working in large universities.

Authors

• Scott Tuttle, University of Kansas

• ChangHwan Kim, University of Kansas