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Faculty diversity plays a key role in college student completion and can have a major impact on students' sense of belonging, retention rates, and persistence. This report examines faculty diversity relative to student diversity, as well as hiring equity, tenure equity, and changes in faculty representation over time for Black and Latino faculty at public, four-year institutions, and highlights colleges and universities that are making progress on diversifying their faculties and those that have more work to do. The findings show that Black and Latino faculty are severely underrepresented at most public, four-year colleges and universities. When Black and Latino faculty are compared against student enrollment in 2020, it is found that more than half (57%) the institutions had failing grades for Black faculty diversity, while nearly four out of five (80%) had F grades for Latino faculty diversity. If institutions are going to increase faculty diversity, they will need to examine their hiring and retention practices, improve campus racial climates, and make resources available to faculty members of color, so they can build and hone their skills and find community. This report offers a variety of other recommendations for institutional leaders, advocates, and federal and state policymakers on building faculty diversity via funding and strategic planning and campus climate initiatives.

Efforts are underway by the Senate education committee to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. Lawmakers are focused on establishing a state-federal partnership program to increase investments in higher education, providing more information to students and their families so they can make informed choices about where to go to college, and simplifying the federal student aid program to reduce the maze of loan repayment options available to borrowers. But there is one proposal to extend Pell Grants to very, very short-term programs. The proposal, which has been introduced as the JOBS Act and in the House Democrats' College Affordability Act and proposed by the Trump administration, would allow Pell Grants to go to programs as short as eight weeks. Some versions of the bill would include only public and nonprofit colleges; others would also allow for-profits to participate. This issue brief explains the potential costs and implications of providing Pell Grants to short-term, non-credit bearing programs.