STEPHANIE FRALEY, PH.D.

Mitigating Faculty Hiring Bias through Rubrics

A new in-depth case study in Science finds that rubrics helped mitigate gender bias in engineering faculty hiring decisions. At the same time, the researchers found evidence that substantial gender bias persisted in some rubric scoring categories and evaluators’ written comments.

Bioengineering professor Stephanie Fraley is a corresponding author on this Science Policy Forum.

Can rubrics combat gender bias in faculty hiring?

Some bias persisted, but rubric use should be encouraged.

Research has documented the presence of bias against women in hiring, including in academic science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Hiring rubrics (also called criterion checklists, decision support tools, and evaluation tools) are widely recommended as a precise, cost-effective remedy to counteract hiring bias, despite a paucity of evidence that they actually work (see table S8). Our in-depth case study of rubric usage in faculty hiring in an academic engineering department in a very research-active university found that the rate of hiring women increased after the department deployed rubrics and used them to guide holistic discussions. Yet we also found evidence of substantial gender bias persisting in some rubric scoring categories and evaluators’ written comments. We do not recommend abandoning rubrics. Instead, we recommend a strategic and sociologically astute use of rubrics as a department self-study tool within the context of a holistic evaluation of semifinalist candidates.

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