The MBA Diversity Pipeline: How Can We Fix It?

By Felicia A.R. Enuha 

January 2010

The title of Dan Macsai’s “Business Schools Urged to Diversify” article in BusinessWeek says it all. In the article, Macsai discusses the threats corporate recruiters have made to business schools to urge them to increase the number of African American and Hispanic students.  Less recruiters coming to a school affects all of us. If recruiters stop coming to your school, then your school could drop in the rankings.  After reading this article, I contemplated long and hard about what we can do to help solve this problem.  How can we be a catalyst for change and help more underrepresented minorities into B-school?

I realized that the problem is huge and complicated. It will take society as a whole to fix the root causes that create a lack of minorities matriculating through undergraduate programs, before we even mention MBA programs. But our discussion here is how to increase the number of minorities attending business school. While taking a deep breath, I admit that I don’t have the answers, but I have some ideas. With everyone’s efforts, I believe we can see an increase of the number of underrepresented minorities applying and gaining admission to top business schools.  

First, I turn to Consortiums Alums. Ask yourself this question: when was the last time you shared information about The Consortium with anyone?  If you cannot answer the question by responding “within the last month,” then I want to take a moment to remind you that we made a commitment to assist in The Consortium’s mission “to enhance diversity in business education and leadership by helping to reduce the serious underrepresentation of African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans in both our member schools’ enrollments and the ranks of management.”    

Alumni, you know first-hand what it takes to successfully navigate the process of applying to MBA programs, leaving the workforce to matriculate through full time MBA programs and securing full time employment after graduating . You are our best resource. In addition to giving back to The Consortium financially, we need to personally take the challenge of identifying and mentoring three to five prospective students through the process of attaining a MBA. In the process of mentoring prospective students, we will charge each new Consortium member to do the same identification and mentoring process.  By doing this we will create a culture of informal recruiting that should increase minority numbers exponentially over time.