by Zarus Cenac
There has been discussion on the low number of Black professors in UK higher education institutions (Arday, 2022; Essilfie-Quaye et al, 2025). The number of Black professors has risen over time (Nowell, 2025) – see Table 1; are there still too few Black professors? There are different methods of assessing Black representation amongst the professorship (Essilfie-Quaye et al, 2025; Advance HE, 2021). This blog post explores such methods in order to gauge whether there are too few Black professors. This assessment is organised through three headings: 1) professors and the UK population, 2) the professorship gap, and 3) professors and non-professors. Additionally, in the context of the different methods, this blog post estimates how large the shortfall of Black professors is. Data for the 2024–25 academic year (HESA, 2026) are used to represent the present-day situation.
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) provides data which have been referred to regarding Black professors (eg Arday, 2022; Parr, 2024). This blog post analyses data from HESA. When it comes to academic staff, HESA presents data regarding i) professors, ii) non-professors, and iii) a senior staff category which can include professors (HESA, 2022, 2024, 2026). Therefore, the number of professors in HESA data is probably lower than the actual number of professors (HESA, 2022, 2024, 2026). Consequently, data regarding that third category (senior staff) are not included in the analysis for this blog post.
Table 1 The Number of Black Professors in UK Higher Education
Note. Data are from HESA (2022, 2024, 2026). HESA rounds data to the nearest five (HESA, 2022, 2024, 2026). It should be noted that, in each year, race/ethnicity is not known for every academic (HESA, 2022, 2024, 2026). Going by HESA (2022, 2024, 2026) data, for the academic years 2016–17 to 2024–25, race/ethnicity is not known (on average) for 7.94% of professors and 9.31% of non-professors; for (all other) analyses (eg Table 2) undertaken in the present blog, data were not analysed regarding academics for whom racial/ethnic grouping is not known.
1. Professors and the UK population
For the 2024–25 academic year, the data (HESA, 2026) show that 1.13% of UK professors in higher education are Black. When assessing the representation of Black people in higher education, it is useful to make a comparison with the representation of Black people of working age in the UK Census (Gibney, 2022). Indeed, by consulting UK Census figures (Office for National Statistics, 2025), we can see that 4.05% of the UK working-age population is Black; when compared to Black representation in the UK working-age population, Black people are underrepresented amongst the professorship (Table 2). As for how much of a shortfall there is, use of HESA (2026) and UK Census (Office for National Statistics, 2025) data suggests that the number of Black professors is 699 people short of where it ought to be as of 2024–25 when compared to what would be found if the proportion of professors who are Black was to match the proportion of the UK working-age population who are Black (Figure 1).
Figure 1 Calculating the Shortfall of Black Professors
Note. Numbers are from (or calculated from) HESA (2026) and Office for National Statistics (2025).
2. The professorship gap
We can find the percentage of White academics who are professors, and the percentage of racial minority academics who are professors (racial minorities as a whole or for more specific categories), and then we can find the difference between the two percentages (Advance HE, 2021). What should we call this difference? Inspired by the term, the degree awarding gap, which refers to the difference in undergraduate degree performance between UK-domiciled White students and UK-domiciled racial minority students (London Metropolitan University, nd), we can refer to this difference in professorship percentages as the professorship gap. The term, the professorship gap, has been used elsewhere (eg Branson and Whitelaw, 2025), but, to the knowledge of the author, not in the same way in which the term is used in the present blog post. There is a professorship gap between Black academics and White academics (Figure 2, Table 2). The professorship gap looks to be greatest when Black academics are the group who are compared to White academics – this gap, like other professorship gaps, shows no indication of declining (Figure 2). Therefore, results suggest a continuing difficulty which Black academics will encounter in attempting to advance to professorship. Indeed, using HESA data (HESA, 2026), we can see that there is a shortfall of 806 Black professors when the situation in 2024–25 is compared to a situation where the ratio of professors to non-professors is the same for Black academics as it is for White academics (Figure 1).
Table 2 Statistical Tests
Note. Using HESA (2026) data of academics (professors and non-professors) for 2024–25, and census data (Office for National Statistics, 2025), z-tests (one- and two-proportion) were undertaken in R (R Core Team, 2025). Samples sizes are in the thousands (HESA, 2026); with huge samples, the smallest of differences can be statistically significant (Wasserstein and Lazar, 2016), therefore, statistical testing regarding Table 2 is not too informative. What would be informative is seeing if differences between proportions are big enough to mean something important, which can be achieved by calculating and interpreting Cohen’s h (Cohen, 1988). Regarding interpretation, Cohen offered suggestions for small but important (h = .20), medium (h = .50), and large (h = .80) differences, although suggestions were not intended to simply be applied in a blanket and definitive fashion (Cohen, 1988). Cohen’s h (Cohen, 1988), using code (Zieffler, 2025), was calculated in R; all hs are very close to .20 or equal/exceed it.
Figure 2 The Professorship Gap: The Gap Between White Academics and Racial Minority Academics
Note. Data used are from HESA (2022, 2024, 2026) for academic years 2016–17 to 2024–25.
3. Professors and non-professors
From the data (HESA, 2022, 2024, 2026), amongst non-professors, the percentage who are Black was 1.99% in 2016–17, and that percentage has steadily risen over the years, reaching 4.21% in 2024–25. Therefore, compared to the UK working-age population (Office for National Statistics, 2025), there was not an underrepresentation of Black people amongst non-professors in 2024–25. Accordingly, given that Black representation is lower amongst the professorship than in the UK working-age population (Table 2), it should not be surprising that, for 2024–25, Black people are represented less amongst professors than non-professors (Table 2). Regarding the extent of the shortfall in Black professors, a calculation using the data (HESA, 2026), shows a shortfall of 737 Black professors (Figure 1).
The shortfall: lowest acceptable number of Black professors?
Our estimation of how many Black professors there should be (and the shortfall) is affected by which of the three methods is used (Figure 1). Nevertheless, for each method, we can ask the question: how many Black professors would be an acceptable minimum number? For example, if there should be 969 Black professors given representation in the UK working-age population (Figure 1), would it be acceptable if there were 960 Black professors? 950? 900? The Cohen’s h statistic (Cohen, 1988) is where the answer may lie (for brief details on Cohen’s h, see Table 2). Essentially, Cohen’s h can be used to quantify the difference between the level at which Black professors are represented and how represented Black professors ought to be (see Cohen, 1988). The larger Cohen’s h is, the larger the difference is (Cohen, 1988). Therefore, if we examine the formula for calculating Cohen’s h (eg Zieffler, 2025), it is relatively straightforward to use Cohen’s h for calculating the smallest number of Black professors which is acceptable, ie the number which is close enough to the expected level (expected, for example, given the UK working-age population). However, what really would need to be decided is the smallest value of Cohen’s h where a difference actually means something important (ie a difference which is not negligible) when it comes to Black professorship (see Cohen, 1988). 270 Black professors (for the 2024–25 academic year) produces a Cohen’s h of/near .20 in the context of the UK working-age population and non-professors (Table 2) and there appear to be considerable shortfalls (Figure 1). This suggests that the shortfall does indeed represent an important and non-negligible difference, and it also indicates that a Cohen’s h of .20 is too high a value to use if we want to calculate the minimum total of Black professors which is satisfactory.
Conclusion
Based on three methods of analysis, there are still too few Black professors in higher education within the UK (Table 2). An averaging of three shortfall estimates (from the three methods) gives an averaged shortfall estimate of 747 Black professors for the 2024–25 academic year. Given that there were only 270 Black professors in that academic year (HESA, 2026), this shortfall is concerning. What may also be concerning is that (as shown in Table 1), in 2024–25, the increase in the number of Black professors was just half that of 2023–24, and just under half of what was found in 2022–23 (there was a sharp rise in 2022–23 (Gibney, 2024). Why may this have happened? It is worth considering if a greater appreciation of the vital need to increase the number of Black professors led to the boost in Black academics being promoted to professorship in 2022–23 (see Gibney, 2024) which carried on through to 2023–24. Therefore, the gains (promotions) in 2022–23 and 2023–24 may have had the effect of significantly decreasing the number of Black academics who would have been strong candidates for professorship in the next few academic years. However, if the bar is set high for Black academics when it comes to promotion (eg Adisa et al., 2025), then there may very well still be a healthy number of Black academics who are strong candidates in those next years.” Essentially, we must thoroughly address if the relatively notable gains of 2022–23 and 2023–24 were temporary phenomena, and if there is now a return to a norm of the weaker increases of earlier academic years (Table 1). Data for 2025–26 will be crucial for helping to address these ideas and concerns.
References: Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Zarus Cenac has worked at UK universities, for example, he was a visiting lecturer at City, University of London. His interests include race and ethnicity from an interdisciplinary perspective.