Diversity In Stem - Blog Posts
The UK’s academic pipeline is failing to retain Black, Asian and other ethnic minority chemists, an analysis by the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Inclusion and Diversity team has shown. The figures are particularly stark for Black students, who are far less likely than white students to be pursuing a PhD and higher academic positions.
While the numbers of UK domiciled ethnic minority students entering chemistry degrees mirror the general population, the figures change dramatically as these students advance through academia’s career stages. At undergraduate, Asian students are around 14% of the population, dropping to 7% at postgraduate. For Black students, the drop is even more severe, from about 5% at undergraduate to just over 1% at postgraduate.
‘Beyond the PhD, the numbers absolutely diminish to the very senior levels of academia, where it is essentially barren ground for Black chemists,’ comments Robert Mokaya, who works on sustainable energy materials at the University of Nottingham. ‘When I was promoted in 2008, I was very aware that there was a lack of others like me but was unaware that I was possibly the first Black chemistry professor in the UK,’ says Mokaya. ‘My hope then was that there would be others. But I don’t know of any other appointment since then. And of course that is really very disappointing.’
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