Everyone knows the University of Florida is trying to join the national bracket of the top five public universities, measured each year by U.S. News & World Report. Improving diversity among faculty is one important step in getting there.
While there is still work to be done to surpass the current five leading universities, UF has steadily improved its percentages of underrepresented minority faculty — most notably with female, Black and Hispanic hires — since 2015.
UF versus the top five
As of 2021, UF sits tied for sixth-best public university overall with the University of California at Santa Barbara in rankings by U.S. News & World Report. The latest federal data on faculty diversity, collected by the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, is from 2018.