Retention and Recruitment of Minority Students and Faculty in Public Affairs and Administration Programs

The need to improve diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) efforts has reached monumental heights in the past decade as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement and other DEIA efforts. This shift in thought has impacted recruitment and hiring practices in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. For years, universities have tried a variety of mechanisms to increase the pool of minority applicants in PhD programs as well as the faculty ranks. However, many of these efforts have not been sustainable. In this article, we discuss the results from a survey of graduate-level public affairs programs to discern specific efforts to increase the number of minority students pursuing graduate degrees and subsequently the number of minority faculty. In addition, we completed an extant review of the literature to determine additional practices that have proven fruitful in other graduate programs.