Professors Are the Likeliest Mentors for Students, Except Those Who Aren’t White

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Having a mentor can make a big difference in students’ academic success — particularly for underrepresented minorities who often seek guidance on how to battle feelings of isolation on campus. Yet a newly released report on college alumni shows that students have disparate access to sources of help navigating the ins and outs of college life, and beyond.

Of the more than 5,000 recent college graduates polled for the Strada-Gallup Alumni survey, more than half said they either hadn’t had a mentor who encouraged them to pursue their goals and dreams, or didn’t agree or disagree with that statement.

The study explored three aspects of the college experience for undergraduates: mentoring, whether they had found career advice helpful, and whether they had found college to be academically challenging. Here are four takeaways from the report:

Professors dominate the role of undergraduate mentor. Nearly two-thirds of alumni who had a mentor during college said that person was a professor. College staff members were next on the list, at 10 percent. At the bottom of the list: sports coaches, at 2 percent.

The job held by a mentor differs according to the student’s race. Just 47 percent of alumni of color said they’d had a mentor on the faculty, compared with 72 percent of white graduates. With minority students often seeking mentors with backgrounds and ethnicities similar to theirs, the stubbornly slow growth in underrepresented minorities in the professoriate probably contributes to the disparity. Meanwhile, although only 10 percent of graduates counted a staff member as a mentor, the proportion of minorities who did so — 15 percent — was roughly double that of white students, at 7 percent. Friends and family members are two other sources of mentorship that minority graduates turn to much more than their peers do, according to the report.

Humanities professors do the most mentoring. Of the alumni who had a professor as a mentor, 43 percent said the professor had taught a subject in the arts and humanities. Business professors, by contrast, yielded mentors for only 9 percent of alumni.

Students talk with their mentors mostly about their studies and how to start their careers. More than 90 percent of recent graduates surveyed said that was the case. About half said their mentors had given them advice about personal issues or their physical or mental health. What are mentors least likely to give advice on? Money problems.

The survey, which has been conducted four times since 2014, has asked graduates about issues that include whether their degree was worth the cost, how often they used career services at their alma mater, and their perception of inclusiveness on campus.

Audrey Williams June is a senior reporter who writes about the academic workplace, faculty pay, and work-life balance in academe. Contact her at audrey.june@chronicle.com, or follow her on Twitter @chronaudrey.