Corporate Recruiters Criticize Univ. of Wisconsin’s Lack of Diversity
MILWAUKEE
The lack of diversity within the University of Wisconsin student body makes the school an increasingly disappointing campus at which to seek talent, a growing number of corporate recruiters are saying.
Companies frequently target students with diverse backgrounds. But UW is statistically one of the least diverse schools in the Big Ten Conference.
In 2005, only 10 percent of the university’s students identified themselves as Black, Hispanic, American Indian or Asian. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, that figure was 32 percent.
UW has a larger enrollment of Asians in its college of engineering, but less than 5 percent of the other students there are minorities.
In recent years, Alcoa, General Motors Corp. and a division of Procter & Gamble Co. said the lack of diversity in the school’s college of engineering is the reason they stopped recruiting there. Procter & Gamble has since resumed recruiting, but other corporations are threatening to look elsewhere unless the university increases its minority enrollment.
