ETHNIC DIVERSITY IN LIBRARY SCHOOLS: Completing the Education Cycle
by Herman L. Totten
One broad goal of American education, of which ibraries are an integral part, is to convey a pluralistic understanding of American culture: to recognize and accept the contributions of a citizenry who are widely diverse in their cultural origins, physical characteristics, and lifestyles; to understand that, ultimately, knowledge is socially constructed by a full range of human types. Multi-ethnic education assumes that ethnic diversity enriches the nation and increases the ways in which its citizens can perceive and solve personal and public problems. This diversity also enriches a society by providing all citizens with more opportunities to experience other cultures and thus to become more fulfilled as human beings.
In the circular, self-feeding cycle of education and librarianship, minority school and public librarians who serve as role models for minority children may inspire the children to go to college. In college, minority academic librarians and library school faculty may inspire them to go to graduate school to become librarians and role models themselves. Any time that students can look around and see people in authority and other students who "look like me," they are comforted and affirmed that they are in a place that is "right" for them. Thus representation of diverse peoples throughout the education cycle is critical to achieving the pluralistic goal of education.
The library profession has particular challenges in recruiting minorities. It is a relatively small field, not highly visible in the grand scheme of careers, and it requires graduate education for professional status. For people who may not even consider college an option, much less have the means to attend, graduate education is not readily seen as a possibility.
This is one reason the American Library Association launched its Spectrum Initiative in 1997. This $1.5 million project is directed toward doubling the number of librarians of color. It renews ALA's longstanding commitment to diversity with, among other things, $5,000 scholarships for graduate studies in library and information science. Obviously, this effort cannot be fully realized without increased awareness and participation on the part of library educators.
This article is intended to raise awareness of racial and ethnic representation in library schools. It focuses on students and faculty in U.S. schools with ALA-accredited master's programs, schools whose graduates directly feed the ranks of American professional librarians. For readers of this journal, it particularly delves into the situation in Texas.
The 1999 annual statistical report from the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) follows national demographic practice by grouping populations in five categories: American Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian/Pacific Islander, Black (non-Hispanic), Hispanic (any race), and White (non-Hispanic). What follows is a brief look at library school student and faculty data from that report (Table 1), with comparisons to census data for the U.S. and Texas (Table 2).
The latest graduate and enrollment figures show that the U.S. master's degree population in 1997-98 continued to be mostly White (88%-89%). The largest minority group was Blacks at 5.5 percent of enrollment, and the smallest was American Indian at 0.4 percent. When school data are compared to general population data, it is immediately clear that every minority group is underrepresented. Percentages of Blacks and Hispanics in library schools in 1997-98 were less than half their respective percentages in the projected U.S. population for 2000. This gap may widen even further, especially for Hispanics, if U.S. population projections hold for 2025 (when children born today are fully engaged in the workforce).
The importance of minority faculty members in predominantly White institutions cannot be overemphasized. Their roles as recruiters of, and mentors and mediators for, minority students extend well beyond traditional faculty responsibilities. Yet the proportions of library school faculty in the 1999 ALISE report were close to or only slightly higher than those of students. Again, every minority group was underrepresented, with Hispanics faring the worst in comparisons to U.S. population figures.
In Texas about 70 percent of library school graduates stay in the state to work, so a closer look at resident library schools is critical to the interests of Texas libraries. The state has three schools with ALA-accredited master's programs: Texas Woman's University, the University of North Texas, and The University of Texas at Austin. Taken together, these varied most noticeably from U.S. school averages in having a lower proportion of Blacks and higher proportion of Hispanics. Black enrollment came in at a scant 32.8 percent of U.S. population projections for 2000 and Hispanic enrollment at 61.9 percent. This was in spite of the fact that enrollment figures for each group were higher than graduate figures, which may reflect a general increase in minority student bodies.
Because distributions are regional, however, it is more meaningful to compare Texas schools with state data. Texas population projections for 2000 are similar to those for the U.S. except that the proportion of Hispanics is 28.9 percent, nearly two and one-half times higher. In a more realistic comparison to this figure, the ratio of Hispanic enrollment to Texas population drops dramatically to 25.3 percent. If current enrollment rates continue, the gap will widen even more by 2025, when the ratio of Hispanic enrollment to Texas population will be only 19.8 percent, and Asians/Pacific Islanders and Blacks will also be seriously underrepresented.
Texas is, of course, an enormous state with large numbers of every demographic group. By 2015 it is projected to be the second most populous state after California. In 1995 it had the third largest White population in the nation and by 2025 it is projected to have the second largest. From 1995 to 2025, Texas is projected to retain its ranks in the top five populations for three ethnic groups: second in Blacks, fourth in Asians/Pacific Islanders, and second in Hispanics (Campbell 1996).
It stands to reason that rapid and significant changes in Texas demographics will affect all sectors of the national and state culture and economy, not least of which is education. In a 1997 book that caused a considerable stir, Murdock et al. predicted that the White population of Texas will become a minority as soon as 2008. In a scenario assuming 1980-1990 growth rates, the authors predicted that by 2010, 48.6 percent of the population will be Anglo, 10.9 percent Black, 36.1 percent Hispanic, and 4.4 percent Other. By 2030, at the same growth rate, 36.7 percent of the population will be Anglo, 9.5 percent Black, 45.9 percent Hispanic, and 7.9 percent Other (p. 21).
Diversity leads to more productivity. In one sense, productivity in librarianship translates into work that allows the full range of voices to be heard in every aspect of library practice. Productivity for library schools means producing quality graduates to do this work. Diversity ensures that the best work is put forth because no one is excluded from the talent pool. But you can't have diversity without paying a price. The price is to work out differences in resources for the disadvantaged to make it possible for them to enter graduate education.
In order to overcome disparities in representation, library schools must recruit and support minority students and faculty. A concerted effort requires four major steps:
Two student recruiting incentives are especially worth mentioning. The first is to make graduate education financially accessible. The 1999 ALISE report states that scholarships, fellowships, and assistantships all increased somewhat in number and value since the previous annual report, but it does not indicate how many of these went to minority students. The ALA Spectrum Initiative minority scholarships are significant, but many more funding sources are needed.
The second incentive is to make graduate education physically accessible. The conventional wisdom, borne out by enrollment distributions that reflect local populations, is that students attend college within 50 miles of home. In a state the size of Texas with only three schools with ALA-accredited master's programs (two in the same city), distance can be an enormous barrier. Fortunately, the technology exists, at reasonable cost, to take the education to the students through distributed learning. All three Texas schools offer distance programs.
As an example of the power of distributed learning to attract minority students, the first two years that the University of North Texas offered its master's program in Houston, the enrollment there raised the proportion of Black students from 3 percent to 10 percent of the whole student body (150 full-time equivalent students). Similarly, the first year the program was delivered to Edinburg, near the Mexican border, the proportion of Hispanic students grew from 3 percent to 16 percent of the student body (209 full-time equivalent students). These programs are delivered onsite, in person or via videoconferencing; as more courses become totally Web-based, the incentive value will increase because students do not have to commute.
If libraries are to increase diversity in their professional ranks, they must rely on library schools to produce entry-level professionals of quality. Library schools, then, are charged with the responsibility of changing the racial and ethnic composition of their student bodies to be more representative of and responsive to the populations their graduates serve. If the predominantly White enrollment ratios of Texas library schools remain relatively static as the White majority of the Texas population continues to shrink, the gaps will only continue to grow.
Herman L. Totten is associate dean and regents professor at the School of Library and Information Sciences, University of North Texas.