MONTVALE, N.J.
More than half of U.S. business school deans — 53 percent — say their university’s faculty diversity program is inadequate, according to a recent survey commissioned by The PhD Project.
Fifty-two percent of business school deans also say they are not yet preparing all students to handle issues of diversity in the corporate world. Nearly six in 10 deans say students who have had a minority business professor or doctoral teaching assistant are better prepared for a career in business.
At universities with campuswide diversity initiatives, 40 percent of the deans say those initiatives were doing enough to ensure a diverse business faculty while 31 percent said the program was inadequate. One in four deans worked at institutions that lacked campuswide diversity initiatives.
“The PhD Project’s goal is to diversify the front of the classroom as a means to better prepare students for a diverse work environment,” says Bernard J. Milano, president of the KPMG Foundation and founder of project. Clearly, he added, the survey reveals how much more needs to be done to ensure a diverse faculty.
In other findings, the majority of deans said minority instructors and teaching assistants had a greater impact than non-minority instructors and teaching assistants on career mentoring for minority students (73 percent); attracting minority students (62 percent) and the education of minority students (60 percent).
On average, doctoral-granting institutions have almost 3 percent minority doctoral students functioning as teaching assistants, according to the report. And only 34 percent of the deans surveyed said that they have seen an increase in the pool of minority applicants at their university.
