EDUCATION BLOG

Today, many of us have a day off at work because it is the Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I watch CNN pretty regularly and they have been talking about MLK Jr. for the last two days. Every politician, from Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to Republicans Mike Huckabee and George Bush, are talking about the contributions of Dr. King today. No doubt Martin Luther King played a pivotal role in ending discrimination and prejudice in American society. The media and politicians tell us that because of Dr. King's efforts and the efforts of other like him Blacks and Whites acheived constitutional equality in the US. But as I sit and watch everything on TV and hear all these speeches, I am thinking about a closely related issue: If blacks and whites have become constitutionally equal and racial discrimination is illegal, why do I not see that equality in business schools of the country?

Don't get me wrong. Everybody agrees that blacks have more access to higher education today than they had fifty years ago (Just read a good blog by a former admissions officer). More blacks have access to mainstream, white-collared jobs than they did half-a-century ago. Black men also lead many of the nation's top companies, such as American Express and AOL Time Warner. So, there is no doubt that as as a nation we have made significant progress because of leaders like MLK who worked tirelessly for racial equality in the country. What I am talking about is that when I get a chance to be at any business school in the country, I am surprised by how few black students (and faculty) I see there. Empirical evidence supports my observation. A research survey counted less than 1,000 Black students at the top-25 business schools in the country, and it seems that black enrollment at these top schools is decreasing. I believe less elite b-schools fare even worse. The number of black students at business schools in most state universities is even lower, especially when seen as a percentage of the total student enrollment. If business schools are where the future leaders of the business world get their training, what does this mean for how leaders of American corporarations will look like 40/50 years from now? Maybe, ABB- Anything but black! (To be completely honest, the racial gap is not limited to just b-schools. According to a Business Week article, "black men lag behind in every major occupational category -- from police officers to accountants" and these gaps are widening at the top.)

I don't think I am the only one to have noticed this. I recently learned of John Rice, a Harvard business graduate, who noticed this glaring race gap and started a non-profit Management Leadership for Tommorrow (MLT) to introduce young blacks to business schools. But certainly, any one person or one organization can not do it all. I think what we need is a top-administration commitment to increase racial diversity (African-American students) in business schools around the country. It would be a shame if American business schools, which are so good at attracting students from other countries including black students from African countries (Harvard Professor Greg Mankiw has a blog on this topic), continue to lag behind in providing young blacks who grew up in the US with the same educational opportunities that are available to their White brothers and sisters.