Universities need to provide data on staff ethnic diversity

It will be compulsory for third-level institutions to provide an annual breakdown of the ethnic diversity among Irish academia from December this year, the Higher Education Authority has said, reports TheJournal.ie.

In a statement to TheJournal.ie, the Higher Education Authority (HEA) said it would be requesting ethnicity data of staff members from higher level institutions each year from this December. The categories of data that will be requested were chosen in collaboration with higher education institutions through the Athena SWAN Ireland Intersectionality Working Group. The group was established in 2019 with an initial goal to develop a way of collecting data on staff and student ethnicity in the Irish higher education sector.

The HEA said that it has also developed a national survey of academic staff “to develop a picture of race equality” across the Irish higher education sector. This survey is scheduled to run in the final quarter of this year and “will provide important baseline data for planning future initiatives to support ethnic diversity” in the Irish higher education sector.
Full report on TheJournal.ie site