THE STATISTICS tell the disheartening story: Five of Harvard's 356 tenured Faculty members are Black, four are Hispanic and 12 are Asian American; 12 senior Faculty members are women. It didn't take a five-month-long study to confirm the obvious--that no matter what department you are in, your chances of encountering anything but white, male professors are slim. But the report on minority and women Faculty members, released this week, does more than present data; it looks between the rows and columns of figures to examine the reasons underlying the sad statistics.

To do that, Dean K. Whitla, director of the office of instructional research and evaluation, and the group helping him with the study, broke down the hiring process into four steps and studied each to determine where minorities are getting bumped. Those steps are advertising the opening in professional journals and sending letters to department chairmen at other universities asking them to notify graduates; compiling a long list--15 to 144 names--of applicants; selecting the five to seven most promising candidates from that long list; and making offers.

The study--which looked in detail at seven departments--indicates that the problem for minorities comes not at the end of the process, when departments make their choices, but at the beginning, when would-be minority applicants make theirs. "The results for minorities were patently clear," the report concludes. "It was rare, very rare, for a minority person to be found even on the long list of junior faculty search committees." In fact, in the 84 searches conducted by the seven departments under study, only 39 out of more than 10,000 applicants on the long lists were minorities, the report states. Two of those minority applicants made it to the short lists, and one received an offer.

WHY DO MINORITIES apparently eschew Harvard? One answer in the report--provided by a former Faculty member now in charge of minority affairs for the American Psychological Association--is that minorities don't like the atmosphere here. They consider the University "aloof and cold, the racial climate in Boston forbidding, junior faculty positions more insecure than at other schools, and the cost of living unusually high."

That argument, while entirely plausible given the realities of the situation here, assumes that the "pool of qualified minorities is sufficient to staff the major research universities in larger numbers," according to the report, which goes on to say that such a view is not common among those responsible for hiring at Harvard and at the six other institutions examined in the study.

What, then, did Whitla and company see as the reason for the absence of minorities on search lists? In a word, demographics--the number of qualified minority candidates is very small because few minorities choose academic careers. In essence, the problem lies much deeper than Harvard's minority Faculty statistics indicate; it is a problem, the report implies, that affects higher education in general.

Recent data included in the report show that the number of Black students enrolled in graduate and professional schools declined nationally by 2.6 per cent between 1976 and 1978. Only two minority graduates--both Black--from Harvard's Class of '80 chose to do graduate work in arts and science fields, and six Black students (of 21 minority students total) entered the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences this fall--the lowest figure in recent years and only half the number that entered in 1977-78.

THAT MEANS THAT Harvard does not receive large numbers of qualified minority applications for Faculty positions because there is a dearth of qualified minority candidates. The report does not describe this "unfortunate fact of limited supply," as it puts it, merely to proclaim despairingly, "That's the way it is; there's nothing we can do." Instead, it recommends several ways for departments to hire a larger share of minority scholars: reserving two visiting professorships each year for minority or women scholars; giving serious consideration to creating new Faculty positions for qualified minority candidates when openings don't exist; and aggressively recruiting minorities.

The last suggestion is especially significant because it implies a complete change in attitude on Harvard's part when it comes to hiring. Traditionally, the University has sat back and allowed interested scholars to come to it, assuming that the abundant research facilities, the quality of students and faculty, and the "mystique" added up to enough of an attraction. Departments have never gone out looking for professors because they never had to. But if the Faculty is sincerely determined to increase its minority representation, it must take an activist role. The report's recommendations look fine on paper, and Dean Rosovsky and the Faculty Council have given them a resounding endorsement. It now remains for departmental faculties to make a strong commitment and put forth a vigorous effort to ensure that the suggestions become operational policies that produce results. They can't start too soon.