What Schools Have the Most Racially Diverse* Philosophy Majors in the U.S.?

* by, of course, certain inevitably arbitrary criteria.

I was digging through the NCES IPEDS database of virtually all bachelor's degree recipients in the U.S., examining demographic trends in the philosophy major (article forthcoming soon in The Philosophers' Magazine).  It occurred to me to wonder which philosophy programs in the U.S. had the most racially or ethnically diverse undergraduate student bodies.

So I gathered all of the race/ethnicity data from IPEDS from 2010-2011 through 2018-2019 (the most recent available year), both for the university overall and for the philosophy major.  I considered all universities that awarded at least 10 bachelor's degrees in philosophy per year (90 students total over the nine-year period; included students only).  Students were included if IPEDS had recorded race/ethnicity data fitting the five most widely recognized racial/ethnic categories in the U.S.: American Indian / Native Alaskan, Asian / Pacific Islander, Black, White, or Hispanic (any race).  Excluded from the count are non-resident aliens, students with race/ethnicity unknown, and non-Hispanic multi-racial students (the last excluded due to uneven reporting).[1] In all, 235 schools qualified.

I then assumed an ideal of 20% in each of these five categories.  Of course, few universities will have 20% American Indian / Alaska Native!  (Non-Hispanic AIAN are currently about 0.9% of the U.S. population.)  In fact, among the included schools, none had more than 5% American Indian / Alaskan Native.[2]  Still, the aim of the measure is to compare with an ideal which might not closely reflect reality, and I didn't want to fuss around with fine-tuning the measure in dubious ways.  A graduating philosophy class with 20% American Indian / Alaska Native, 20% Asian / Pacific Islander, 20% Black, 20% White, and 20% Hispanic (any race) would be an impressively diverse class in a U.S. context, so I'm comfortable with that as a standard.  (Another possible standard might be match to U.S. population percentages, but it would be odd to have a diversity measure that treated a school with 5% AIAN as "less diverse" than one with 0.9% AIAN.)

My actual numerical measure, then, was just the simple, stupid, obvious sum of the squares of the differences between each school's percentage of philosophy graduates in each of the five racial/ethnic categories and 20%.  How far is each school from this somewhat arbitrary ideal of having 20% in each category?

Drum roll, please....

1. CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice

2. CUNY City College

3. University of California-Riverside

4. California State Polytechnic University-Pomona

5. University of California-Irvine

6. San Jose State University

7. San Francisco State University

8. California State University-Los Angeles

9. University of Houston

10. California State University-Long Beach

11. California State University-Fresno

12. Amherst College

13. California State University-Sacramento

14. CUNY Queens College

15. CUNY Brooklyn College

16. University of California-San Diego

17. California State University-Fullerton

18. University of California-Santa Barbara

19. CUNY Hunter College

20. Florida Atlantic University

21. University of California-Davis

22. University of California-Los Angeles

23. Georgia State University

24. St John's University-New York

25. San Diego State University

26. University of Miami

27. California State University-Northridge

28. CUNY Lehman College

29. The University of Texas at Arlington

30. Stony Brook University

31. University of Illinois at Chicago

32. CUNY Bernard M Baruch College

33. Northwestern University

34. Saint John Vianney College Seminary

35. University of Southern California

36. University of Florida

37. University of California-Berkeley

38. University of San Diego

39. University of New Mexico-Main Campus

40. Emory University

41. New York University

42. Seton Hall University

43. Northeastern Illinois University

44. The University of Texas at San Antonio

45. Rice University

46. University of California-Santa Cruz

47. Rutgers University-New Brunswick

48. Cornell University

49. The University of Texas at Austin

50. Santa Clara University

51. Dartmouth College

52. Duke University

53. Loyola Marymount University

54. Stanford University

55. University of Maryland-College Park

56. Boston University

57. University of Massachusetts-Boston

58. Princeton University

59. Johns Hopkins University

60. Columbia University in the City of New York

61. University of Maryland-Baltimore County

62. Texas State University

63. Harvard University

64. University of Pennsylvania

65. Carnegie Mellon University

66. Yale University

67. SUNY at Albany

68. Baylor University

69. University of South Florida-Main Campus

70. Trinity College

71. University of Nevada-Las Vegas

72. DePaul University

73. Syracuse University

74. University of Washington-Seattle Campus

75. University of Arizona

76. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

77. Florida State University

78. Texas A & M University-College Station

79. Fordham University

80. University of Alabama at Birmingham

81. University of San Francisco

82. Pepperdine University

83. University of Chicago

84. Hamilton College

85. University of North Carolina at Charlotte

86. University of Central Florida

87. American Public University System

88. College of the Holy Cross

89. University of Memphis

90. University of Nevada-Reno

91. East Carolina University

92. Boston College

93. Villanova University

94. Texas Tech University

95. Metropolitan State University of Denver

96. Arizona State University-Tempe

97. Brown University

98. Binghamton University

99. Hofstra University

100. George Washington University

101. William & Mary

102. Temple University

103. California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo

104. Vanderbilt University

105. University of Rochester

106. Virginia Commonwealth University

107. University of North Texas

108. University of Colorado Colorado Springs

109. Loyola University Chicago

110. Georgetown University

111. Bates College

112. University of Virginia-Main Campus

113. Southern Methodist University

114. Williams College

115. Brandeis University

116. Saint Louis University

117. Creighton University

118. Wesleyan University

119. Conception Seminary College

120. Tufts University

121. University of Toledo

122. Florida International University

123. University of Dallas

124. Washington State University

125. Oberlin College

126. Florida Gulf Coast University

127. University of Alabama in Huntsville

128. Washington University in St Louis

129. University of Connecticut

130. University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus

131. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

132. Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus

133. Vassar College

134. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

135. Colgate University

136. Towson University

137. Illinois State University

138. Bucknell University

139. University at Buffalo

140. Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College

141. Middlebury College

142. Wake Forest University

143. Marquette University

144. Northern Arizona University

145. Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary-Overbrook

146. University of Oregon

147. Seattle University

148. University of Utah

149. University of Notre Dame

150. University of North Florida

151. The College of Wooster

152. Ohio State University-Main Campus

153. American University

154. West Chester University of Pennsylvania

155. Northern Illinois University

156. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

157. Dickinson College

158. Miami University-Oxford

159. University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus

160. The Catholic University of America

161. Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville

162. Calvin University

163. University of Louisville

164. University of Missouri-Columbia

165. Whitman College

166. Franciscan University of Steubenville

167. University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

168. University of Georgia

169. University of Massachusetts-Amherst

170. Gettysburg College

171. Portland State University

172. University of Arkansas

173. Gonzaga University

174. University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus

175. University of Akron Main Campus

176. University of Massachusetts-Lowell

177. Michigan State University

178. Clemson University

179. University of Colorado Boulder

180. North Carolina State University at Raleigh

181. University of Kansas

182. University of South Carolina-Columbia

183. The University of Texas at El Paso

184. Pontifical College Josephinum

185. SUNY College at Geneseo

186. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

187. The University of Tennessee-Knoxville

188. Christopher Newport University

189. University of Delaware

190. The University of West Florida

191. Western Washington University

192. Mississippi State University

193. Wheaton College

194. University of Missouri-Kansas City

195. University of Cincinnati-Main Campus

196. Purdue University-Main Campus

197. West Virginia University

198. Colorado College

199. Brigham Young University-Provo

200. University of Rhode Island

201. University of Wisconsin-Madison

202. Eastern Michigan University

203. Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania

204. Tulane University of Louisiana

205. Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis

206. Iowa State University

207. Grand Valley State University

208. Furman University

209. State University of New York at New Paltz

210. The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

211. Central Michigan University

212. Eastern Washington University

213. Auburn University

214. University of Iowa

215. The University of Alabama

216. Colorado State University-Fort Collins

217. Kenyon College

218. Indiana University-Bloomington

219. Duquesne University

220. St Olaf College

221. John Carroll University

222. University of Scranton

223. University of Kentucky

224. University of Minnesota-Duluth

225. Middle Tennessee State University

226. Western Michigan University

227. Western Carolina University

228. University of Vermont

229. University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

230. College of Charleston

231. Utah Valley University

232. University of St Thomas

233. University of New Hampshire-Main Campus

234. University of Idaho

235. Kenrick Glennon Seminary

Here's the top ten as a picture, because that's good for social media:

Hey, UC Riverside is #3.  Go, team!

Strikingly, the top twenty positions are dominated by Cal State schools (8 spots), CUNY schools (5 spots), and University of California schools (4 spots).  Only three of the top twenty schools (Houston, Amherst, and Florida Atlantic) are not schools from one of those three large public university systems.

For perspective, the graduates of #1 ranked school, CUNY John Jay, are 0% American Indian / Alaska Native, 8% Asian / Pacific Islander, 30% Black, 29% White, and 34% Hispanic (any race).

Of course, most of the top ranked schools on the list above have very diverse overall student bodies.  When I apply the same 20-20-20-20-20 measure to student bodies as a whole, the most diverse schools are:

1. CUNY City College
2. University of Houston
3. CUNY Hunter College
4. CUNY Brooklyn College
5. CUNY Bernard M Baruch College
6. San Francisco State University
7. St John's University-New York
8. CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice
9. California State University-Long Beach
10. CUNY Queens College
11. San Jose State University
12. California State University-Sacramento
13. University of Illinois at Chicago
14. Georgia State University
15. California State Polytechnic University-Pomona
16. University of California-Riverside
17. California State University-Fullerton
18. University of California-Los Angeles
19. Stanford University
20. University of San Francisco

How about measuring the difference between the diversity of the student body as a whole and the diversity of the philosophy department?  What schools draw relatively diverse philosophy students from relatively less diverse overall student bodies?  I've done it as a simple subtraction of the previous two measures.  Fifty-two schools (23%) have more diverse philosophy students than their student body overall:[3]

1. Trinity College
2. Bucknell University
3. Villanova University
4. Hamilton College
5. Bates College
6. Illinois State University
7. Calvin University
8. College of the Holy Cross
9. The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
10. University of San Diego
11. California State University-Los Angeles
12. Miami University-Oxford
13. University of Toledo
14. Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
15. East Carolina University
16. Gettysburg College
17. Creighton University
18. Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus
19. West Virginia University
20. Brigham Young University-Provo

21. Clemson University

22. University of California-Irvine

23. Franciscan University of Steubenville

24. Texas A & M University-College Station

25. Baylor University

26. Saint Louis University

27. University of Florida

28. Northwestern University

29. University of Colorado Colorado Springs

30. West Chester University of Pennsylvania

31. University of Missouri-Columbia

32. Dickinson College

33. Conception Seminary College

34. Oberlin College

35. Marquette University

36. Colgate University

37. Ohio State University-Main Campus

38. CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice

39. University of California-Riverside

40. Wake Forest University

41. University of Alabama in Huntsville

42. Washington State University

43. University of Utah

44. Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College

45. Iowa State University

46. University of Minnesota-Duluth

47. University of Akron Main Campus

48. Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville

49. Florida State University

50. Boston College

51. Middlebury College

52. University of California-San Diego

For perspective, the overall graduates of #1 ranked school, Trinity College, are 0% American Indian / Alaska Native, 6% Asian / Pacific Islander, 7% Black, 79% White, and 9% Hispanic (any race); while their philosophy graduates are 0% American Indian / Alaska Native, 4% Asian / Pacific Islander, 12% Black, 68% White, and 15% Hispanic (any race).

Since typically the philosophy major is less racially/ethnically diverse than the student body as a whole, it could be interesting to see what practices these schools employ that might be responsible for having reversed that general trend.

Updates, May 25

1. Since most of the top 20 schools on the first list are public, some readers were curious whether public schools are in general more diverse than private schools.  I ran the numbers today and actually did not find a statistically detectable effect overall.  The mean diversity score was 0.42 for the public schools, 0.40 for the private schools (t = 1.0, p = .30).  Eyeballing, the explanation seems to be that public schools might be disproportionately among the most diverse and the least diverse (by this measure), depending on the diversity of their locale, while private schools cluster more near the middle.

2. Another reader asked about Historically Black Colleges and Universities.  None qualified for the list above, because none met the cutoff number of philosophy major completions (90 in the past ten years).  The three HBCUs with the most philosophy graduates were Morehouse (67), Morgan State (41), and Howard (40) (not including a few multiracial, race/eth unknown, and non-resident students, for comparability with the methods above).

3. Pertinent to 2, IPEDS similarly has a "tribal colleges" category including 34 schools (as of 2018-2019).  IPEDS, strikingly, lists no bachelor's degree recipients in category 38.01 ("Philosophy") for any of these schools.  However, most of these colleges award few bachelor's degrees.  The largest, Haskell Indian Nations University, awarded only 755 bachelor's degrees total over the nine year period.  Schools of that size will typically lack the enrollments needed to sustain a philosophy major.

4. Various readers suggested alternative measures of diversity, especially measures more sensitive to differences in local context.  I support that.  I don't mean to suggest that this is the only or best measure of racial diversity.  It's simply a convenient and straightforward measure that I hope captures something useful.

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[1] University of Washington, Bothell, is also excluded since it seems to have erroneous or at least unrepresentative data.  The category "two or more races" would have been nice to include, but NCES appears to have measured it inconsistently over the period, with demographically implausible sharp increases in this category.  Furthermore, elite schools appear to have been faster than nonelite schools to classify their students in that category once NCES opened it.  "Nonresident alien" is also potentially an interesting category from the perspective of diversity, though this category also tends to favor elite schools that draw foreign students.  If these two categories are added to the measure and the target proportions are reduced to 1/7 per group, the top ten most diverse philosophy majors are:

1. Wellesley College*

2. California State University-East Bay*

3. CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice

4. CUNY City College

5. St John's University-New York

6. University of Hawaii at Manoa*

7. University of California-Riverside

8. California State Polytechnic University-Pomona

9. San Francisco State University

10. Amherst College

[* not included in main post ranking, because fewer than 10 BAs per year in the five target categories; revised May 25]

[2] The top five schools in terms of percentage of graduating American Indian / Native Alaskan philosophy majors are as follows.  Given the small numbers, there will be a lot of noise in these estimates, so I present the AIAN / total numbers in parentheses after the schools:

1. Eastern Washington University (5/93)

2. University of New Mexico-Main Campus (14/301)

3. University of Alabama in Huntsville (4/95)

4. University of Nevada-Reno (4/126)

5. California State University-Long Beach (8/262)

Given the small numbers, extending beyond the top five probably doesn't make sense.  The 9th and 10th ranked campuses only graduated 2 AIAN philosophy majors during the period.

[3] Updated 12:46 p.m. to include all 52.