Underprepared for the Profession: The lack of minority Ph.D.’s has a lot to do with the lack of socialization into academic life

Building Future Faculty Program, held annually at North Carolina State University
The program is aimed at helping underrepresented (by virtue of their race or gender) graduate students and Ph.D.’s to enter the profession. In three days of career workshops and networking, we built various forms of capital that we hope to parlay into full-time, tenure-track jobs

A cyclical, negatively reinforcing pattern seems to persist in doctoral education. One the one hand, faculty demographics do not reflect the increasingly diversified undergraduate population. Minority students may not pursue a Ph.D. because they see a lack of mentors, a lack of financial support, and a lack of "fit." Some undergraduates don’t even realize that graduate study is an option; their potential success in a Ph.D. program is dependent on them hearing about it, often by chance.

Read more here: http://chronicle.com/article/Underprepared-for-the/229915/