Survey: Minority Faculty Feel More Stress - Higher Education

Survey: Minority Faculty Feel More Stress - Higher Education: Minority faculty members experience stress more frequently than their White peers, largely because of perceived discrimination and worries about personal finance, a new survey released Wednesday by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA shows.

A lead author of a report about the survey—formally known as the Undergraduate Teaching Faculty: The 2010–2011 HERI Faculty Survey—attributed the higher levels of reported stress among minority faculty to the fact that minority faculty tend to have lower rank in the world of academe.

“If you’re in a powerless position, you’re even more powerless if you don’t have tenure,” said professor Sylvia Hurtado, director of HERI. “If you feel that you’re marginalized and you don’t have the stability of job security, you’re going to feel much more vulnerable.”