Racial representation among academics and students’ academic and labor market outcomes

We study the impact of racial representation among academic staff on university students’ academic and labor market outcomes. We use administrative data on the universe of staff and students at all UK universities, linked to survey data on students’ post-graduation outcomes, exploiting idiosyncratic variation (conditional on a rich set of fixed effects and observable student, staff, and university-department level characteristics) in the proportion of racial minority academic staff to whom students are exposed. We find that minority and own-race representation benefits the academic outcomes of minority groups: When minority students are exposed to 1 standard deviation higher proportion of minority academics, they are 1.03ppt (2% of the mean) more likely to graduate with a first or upper second class honors degree and they are also 0.88ppt (1.5% of the mean) more likely to graduate on time. There is no beneficial impact of minority or own-race representation on the labor market outcomes of minorities. However, we do find that minority representation among academic staff significantly increases progression of minority students to graduate study, suggesting that there may be benefits of same-race representation operating through provision of role models or domain-specific advice and guidance. • We estimate the impact of racial minority academic staff on UK university students’ academic and labour market outcomes. • Racial minority academics have a positive impact on academic attainment by minority students. • There is no significant effect of racial minority academics on academic outcomes for White students. • Minority academics increase minority students’ likelihood of going into further study within 6 months of graduation, and reduce their probability of being employed by a similar amount.