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University of Texas adopts Rooney Rule

simosfrostyone

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From the Texas Tribune:

Asserting that the faculty and leadership in the University of Texas System doesn't match the makeup of the students, Chancellor Bill McRaven said Thursday that he will require that a woman or minority candidate be interviewed for every high-level position at its 14 universities and medical schools. The requirement will be similar to the National Football League's Rooney Rule, which mandates that a minority head coaching candidate be interviewed before a final hire is made. It's not required that a minority or woman be selected, but one must at least be strongly considered. McRaven said the rule will pertain to all hires at the dean level or higher. It will be encouraged, but not required, for professors or other mid-level jobs. "We need to have our faculty reflect more of our student population," he said. " We want to make sure that the students can look up to faculty members of the same ethnicity and say, 'This is who I want to be.'" McRaven designed the rule to ensure that women and minorities will be strongly considered. One can't just be interviewed early in the process and then dropped. A woman or minority will have to be considered all the way until the last round of the process. McRaven said he will also require each school to submit a report to him detailing how it plans to close the gender gap. The NFL has had a similar rule since 2003. The idea is to force people making hiring decisions to seek out talented minority or woman candidates and to give those candidates a chance they might not have otherwise received. "This will begin to move the needle," McRaven said, "but if we don't start now, then 20, 30 years from now we won't look much different."Right now, 32 percent of UT System students are white, compared with 62 percent of faculty.Almost 40 percent of students are Hispanic, while 11 percent of the faculty is Hispanic. McRaven said those numbers are disappointing. “We need faculty, administrators and campus leaders who understand the people they’re serving, who come from the same places,” he said.

I'm just glad they won't be using quotas--that would violate the 14th Amendment.
 
When your faculty is almost twice as white as your student body, you have a problem.

Good move by UT.
 
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The Rooney Rule has been considered a great success in the NFL and a model for how to improve the talent pool in hiring. It directly resulted in the Steelers hiring Mike Tomlin.
 
Good point. If I remember correctly his program is about as milquetoast as it gets. However I don't believe they technically count as faculty.

Uhh, not at all, really.

ETA: "milquetoast" means timid or submissive, not white.
 
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Jim Caldwell is an over .500 NFL head coach.
 
Interesting racial makeup of the HCs of the undefeated teams now that I think of it.
 
Heard an NPR story on the Rooney Rule last week and I was surprised they didn't bring that up.
 
The idea has some merit but much depends on how the Rooney rule is to be implemented. The right way would be simply to add affirmative action candidates to the pool of finalists, if there are none on the first list of finalists. The wrong way would be to drop non affirmative action candidates from the list of finalists in order to make way for the affirmative action ones.
 
sailor, I don't understand why you have to make things so complicated. The Rooney Rule is simple.

Instead of only recruiting and considering the best white candidates, recruit and consider the best candidates regardless of race.
 
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