Blacks and Latinos remain underrepresented among the faculty at California State University campuses despite increases over the last 16 years, according to a report released Wednesday.
Overall, the system has increased its number of minority and women professors. But the university's 22,814 faculty members still don't mirror the state's demographics.

This is an issue some Cal State San Bernardino students and professors have brought up over the past several months, both at campus demonstrations and in letters to the editor of the Coyote Chronicle, the campus newspaper.

Three of every four Cal State professors at the San Bernardino campus and across the system are white.

Cal State San Bernardino counts on nationwide searches and drawing in large candidate pools to bring in as many minority applicants as possible, said Louis Fernandez, provost and vice president of academic affairs.

"We'd obviously like a diverse faculty,' Fernandez said. "But it may take awhile.'

During the 2001-02 school year, Cal State San Bernardino hired about 41 new professors. Of those, 30 were white, six Asian, three Latino, one black and one "other nonwhite.'

Fernandez called that a good year, but added, "We'd like to do better than that.'

State law prohibits the university from hiring based on ethnicity.

Latinos, who make up about 31 percent of California's 35 million residents, account for 7 percent of Cal State's professors and 27 percent of its students.

Blacks account for 7 percent of California's population but only 4 percent of Cal State's faculty.

Asians are more adequately represented 11 percent of the state population and 12 percent of Cal State's faculty.

The university continues to hire mostly white professors, the report showed. About 70 percent of new hires between 1996 and 2001 were white.

These numbers can be misleading, Cal State spokeswoman Clara Potes-Fellow said.

"We have to look at the percentage of minorities who have attained Ph.D.s and the faculty representation at CSU,' she said. "We cannot hire from the overall population of California. We are only hiring from the pool of individuals who have Ph.D.s. These are two different universes.'

About 19 percent of people who graduate with doctorates are ethnic minorities, according to the National Research Council.

In 2002 a year not included in the report 28 percent of new faculty hires in the Cal State system were minorities, Potes-Fellow said.

"We have made significant progress in increasing the representation of ethnic minority and women faculty, and want to see this trend continuing,' she said.

The report tracked the system's gender and ethnic makeup between 1985 and 2001.

During that time, the number of female faculty members increased from 31 percent to 44 percent.

The number of American Indians increased from 0.5 percent to 0.7 percent. They make up 1 percent of the state's population.

State Sen. Richard Alarcn, D-Van Nuys, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on College and University Admissions and Outreach, ordered the report two years ago to gauge the makeup of CSU's faculty.

With more than 400,000 students, the 23-campus system is the largest public university in the nation.

The report was completed in April and made available Wednesday by the California Research Bureau.

"We are one of the most diverse states in the union,' Alarcn said. "We should have higher numbers. The CSU has to have more aggressive policy statements that are very strongly and clearly focused on diversity.'

Alarcn said he plans to ask for similar reports on the University of California and the state's community colleges.

The report is available online at the California State Library's web site, www.library.ca.gov Under the heading "products,' click on California Research Bureau Public Policy reports.