Including excluded groups: The slow racial transformation of the South African university system
Helena Barnard, Robin Cowan, Alan Kirman & Moritz Müller
#2016-024
This paper looks at the inclusion of excluded groups, notably the racial
transformation of the South African university system. Both demand-side factors - are
qualified black people hired as faculty? - and supply-side factors - are there enough
qualified black people who can be hired as faculty? - need to be aligned. Prior evidence
suggests that demand and supply both have both a psychological and a structural
dimension. Affirmative action-type regulations address the structural dimension of demand,
but homophily (a "love for the own") can nonetheless limit the hiring of faculty
in white-dominated hiring committees. On the supply side, the weak education system
limits the structural supply of quality black potential academics. But the limited hiring
of black academics and resulting limited role models mean that few black people even
consider an academic career. This paper presents a model of hiring (either randomly or
on a homophilic basis), calibrated with data from the South African university system
from the end of Apartheid. Our evidence suggests that even a relatively small reduction of
homophily increases the rate at which the excluded group enters the workforce, and also
that the eects of homophily and feedback from previous hires are of a similar magnitude.
Nonetheless, the conclusions from the model suggest that the relatively long duration of
a research career and slow growth of the national university system will result in a slow
process of racial transformation.
JEL Classification: O15; O30; I2
Keywords: universities; racial transformation; South Africa; transformation; higher edu-
cation access; segregation