Breaking barriers: advancing ethnic diversity in higher education professional services

This blog was kindly authored by Dr Louise Oldridge, Senior Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University (with research team Dr Maranda Ridgway, Dr David Dahill, Dr Ricky Gee, Dr Stefanos Nachmias, Dr Loyin Olotu-Umoren, Dr Jessie Pswarayi, Dr Sarah Smith, Natalie Selby-Shaw and Dr Rhianna Garrett).

Despite decades of progress in widening participation and diversifying student bodies, UK higher education still faces a stark reality: senior professional services roles remain overwhelmingly white.

Indeed, when the professional body for senior professional services staff (Association of Heads of University Administration – AHUA) embarked on work to ‘shift the dial’ on race, membership had less than 5% global majority colleagues.

While universities champion equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), and the sector has developed levers such as the Race Equality Charter (REC), the lived experiences of ethnically minoritised staff highlight systemic barriers that hinder career progression and perpetuate inequality.

A recent research project funded by AHUA and conducted by the Centre for People, Work & Organizational Practice at Nottingham Business School explored these challenges. Drawing on interviews, focus groups, and institutional data, the project studied the career barriers and enablers for ethnically minoritised professionals in senior roles.

The diversity gap in professional services leadership

University leadership teams have diversified in some areas, for instance among governors, students, and even vice-chancellors, but senior professional services remain largely homogenous.

Recruitment practices, opaque progression pathways, and institutional norms continue to privilege whiteness and middle-class values, leaving talented individuals from minoritised backgrounds sidelined.

With limited institutional data available for the study, it revealed that while representation among lower-grade professional services roles has improved, senior positions tell a different story.

Unlike academic colleagues, there is a stark shift in career management for professional services staff, with our research finding that many institutions are unequipped to track the career trajectories of professional service staff.

Lived experiences: authenticity, masking, and emotional labour

The qualitative insights from interviews and focus groups paint a vivid picture of what it means to navigate professional services as a person of colour. Participants spoke candidly about the emotional labour involved in “code-switching” (altering language, appearance, or behaviour to fit dominant norms) and “masking” aspects of identity to avoid judgment or exclusion.

One participant reflected: “I felt I had to disappear… to succeed, I needed to be someone else.” Others described being labelled as “diversity hires” or facing regular microaggressions that impacted confidence and wellbeing.

Intersectionality compounds these challenges. Participant responses indicated that race intersected with gender, class, disability, and caring responsibilities, creating layered barriers that are often invisible to policy-makers. Women of colour, for instance, reported being undermined due to both race and gender, while those with disabilities faced inflexibility and a lack of empathy.

Performative EDI and the need for structural change

In a blog on the REC for Advance HE, Patrick Johnson calls for institutions to make an authentic commitment to dismantling racial barriers for staff. Institutions can use data to expose disparities and perceptions of the operating culture and environment.

As Patrick notes, it is important that challenges are acknowledged openly and specific actions put in place in response.

That said, participants in this research questioned the depth of their organisation’s commitments. EDI initiatives were described as performative and focused on optics rather than outcomes. As one interviewee put it:

We talk about EDI when we’re going for awards, but it’s not part of our everyday practice.

This disconnect between rhetoric and reality highlights a critical gap: policies alone cannot dismantle systemic inequities.

Ultimately, what is needed is leadership from those in roles which can challenge the structural issue, redefine what it means to be ‘professional’, develop clear career pathways, transparent promotion processes, and accountability mechanisms that move beyond tick-box exercises. REC is a starting point for supporting this process, but cannot be seen either as a panacea or an end in itself.

Five pathways to change

The report offers a roadmap for transformation, organised into five thematic areas:

1. Structural reform and policy change
   Clarify career pathways for professional services staff, audit recruitment practices, embed accountability into EDI policies and ensure progression routes are transparent – such as providing an understanding of ‘typical’ career histories for leadership roles.
2. Representation and inclusion
   Increase diversity at senior levels through targeted development and sponsorship. Avoid tokenism by ensuring ethnically minoritised staff have meaningful influence, not just visibility. This could include clearer succession planning.
3. Development, support, and research
   Invest in mentoring, coaching, and executive development programmes tailored to professional services. This reflects both formal support staff networks and more informal collectives, alongside committing to longitudinal research to track progress. For example, creating an informal network of colleagues across the sector.
4. Cultural change and co-creation
   Move beyond compliance-driven EDI to authentic engagement. Challenge assumptions about professionalism and leadership, and co-create inclusive cultures with staff. This could mean redefining what institutions view as ‘professional(ism)’.
5. Sector-level collaboration and accountability
   Coordinate efforts across professional bodies, share best practice, and ensure transparent reporting. Diversity must be a collective responsibility, and could include sector-wide knowledge exchange, clear metrics and outcomes.

From awareness to action

The report calls for dismantling what research team member Rhianna Garrett describes as ‘the architecture of whiteness’, which underpins institutional norms. This means rethinking recruitment, valuing professional services as integral to university success, and creating spaces where ethnically minoritised staff can thrive without compromising their identity.

As one focus group participant put it:

We recognise there is an issue, but I don’t think we really understand what to do about it – and a big part of that is because things are so white.

For AHUA, and other sector professional service organisations, this report is a call for the sector to deliver systemic, sustained change. The question is not whether higher education can afford to prioritise diversity in professional services leadership; it is whether it can afford not to. It informs our next steps in a Theory of Change workshop to identify meaningful actions moving forward.

As Dr Andrew Young, Chief Operating Office, The London School of Economics and Political Science, and AHUA project sponsor states:

The evidence in this report should make all of us in higher education uncomfortable.  Change will only happen when we stop celebrating statements of intent and start measuring outcomes.