Academic Affirmative Action: Definition of Terms and Methodology

• Federal affirmative action regulations applying to federal contractors require the University of California to collect data on the race and gender of its employees, including faculty, and compare those data to estimates of the race and gender of the pool of individuals qualified for those jobs (the “availability”).
• At UC, availability is estimated using national Ph.D. production data, adjusted for the time period during which tenured or non-tenured faculty would have obtained their degree, and weighted to reflect the proportion of faculty in each field at UC.
• Affirmative action practices guided by the federal regulations applying to contractors use the broadest pool appropriate for estimating availability, consistent with the institutional commitment to recruit broadly.
• If a smaller subset of institutions is used to estimate availability, reflecting the institutions from which UC actually hires 75% of its faculty, there are 1-2% fewer women estimated to be available overall and in most fields.
• If there are fewer women in the employee group (i.e. tenured faculty) than would be predicted based on estimates of availability, then women are “underutilized” in that job group.
• If there are as many women in a particular job group as would be predicted based on estimates of availability yet there are still very few women, then women are “underrepresented” in that job group.
• Where there is underutilization in a particular job group, federal affirmative action regulations require UC to set “placement goals” equal to the rate of availability. For example, if women were 50% of the estimated availability pool, and only 35% of the faculty, then a placement goal would be set to hire women at a rate of 50% until women were no longer underutilized.
• According to the federal affirmative action regulations, a placement goal is neither a quota nor a justification for extending a preference. Placement goals are “reasonably attainable objectives or targets that are used to measure progress toward achieving equal employment opportunity.”
• If a department, group of departments, school or campus is hiring women at less than the rate of availability, then they are failing to meet placement goals.

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