B-Schools Put Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Front & Center
The Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Last summer, in the wake of the George Floyd murder, UVA’s Darden Graduate School of Business dean convened two groups to assess and confront the issues surrounding social justice and equity on the Darden campus. One was the Working Group on Race and Equity and the other was a high-level cabinet of Black alumni that could propose recommendations to leadership and oversee their execution.
From the groups sprouted a number of initiatives focused on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Darden scheduled a Diversity Conference and trained faculty in DEI practice. Student acting troupes from the University of Virginia came into classrooms to recreate and work through uncomfortable dynamics that may arise in diverse spaces. The school is exploring ways to attach inclusion-based accountability in faculty performance. And, it started its Climate Index Project, bringing together students and faculty to identify metrics to really measure how Darden’s climate is changing, and hopefully improving, over time.
It’s not only an acknowledgment of the social justice conversations happening on its campus and MBA schools across the country, it’s a reflection of a more diverse reality, Martin Davidson, Darden’s senior associate dean, tells Poets&Quants.
Martin Davidson, Darden
“I think the world, and B-schools in particular, are catching up. We are in a global marketplace and having a capacity to engage, lead, and manage across differences is not an option,” says Davidson who first began working on DEI issues at Darden in 2008. He returned to the school as global chief diversity officer the month before the 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
“The social consciousness around identity – and the diversity of identity – is at something of a tipping point,” he said. “You just can’t be a competent leader if you aren’t engaged in this. The need for business education to adapt and to become better at incorporating that into learning is mission critical.”
HARVARD JUST WELCOMED ITS FIRST DEI CHIEF; WHARTON JUST STARTED A SEARCH
Darden is hardly alone. Business schools across the country are implementing DEI programs and courses, and they are putting real money behind the initiatives. Stanford Graduate School of Business published its first DEI report for public consumption in late 2019 and followed up on its progress in a public report a year later. Harvard Business School’s first Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer started his job in September of this year. Also last month, the Wharton School hired an executive search firm to begin a search for a Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer who will become a member of the Wharton senior leadership team.
Many schools see this as a moment in time when substantial progress can occur. “There is an energy now more than ever before to go leaps and bounds and we need to capitalize on that quickly,” says Kabrina Chang, who in July was appointed the first associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. The school has long had a Center for Diversity along with a fellowship program for underrepresented minorities and first-generation college students.
But she believes the murder of George Floyd has galvanized society and higher education to do much more than it has. “There is no lack of energy and motivation from faculty, staff and students. Before my position was created, there was already energy. It was piecemeal and not organized…My job is to harness that energy, put some structure to it, and put some programs in place so that we can really move forward and make progress.”
In this context, it is hardly surprising that Bloomberg Businessweek last month released its first ever Diversity Index as part of its Best B-Schools 2021-22 ranking. The index was one of five metrics used to rank schools along with Compensation, Learning Networking and Entrepreneurship.
“The context within which we launch the Diversity Index is the historic national reckoning on race that was triggered by the killing of George Floyd,” Bloomberg writes in its index description. “Our mission in rolling it out is to assess and rank B-Schools based on the degree to which they are addressing the institutional racism and discrimination that have excluded certain minority groups and women from U.S. MBA programs.”
Bloomberg’s diversity index shows perhaps the best apples-to-apples comparison of percentages of underrepresented minorities enrolled at top MBA programs across the country, without prospective students having to compare data found on individual B-school websites. Half of the index score is based on ethnicity, the other half on gender, according to Bloomberg.
P&QS TOP 25 COMPARISONS
For comparison, P&Q looked at the top 25 B-Schools in our latest ranking, which combines the five most influential business school rankings in the world. You can see the full breakdown in the chart at the bottom of this page.
None of P&Q’s top 25 schools ranked higher than 15th in the Bloomberg diversity index, a milestone reached by our 14th-ranked Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School (P&Q’s No. 19 ranked B-school) ranked lowest in Bloomberg’s diversity index at 73.
Overall, P&Qs top five B-schools had mixed results in the diversity index.
No. 1 Stanford GSB ranked 16th in diversity
No. 2 Chicago (Booth) ranked 43rd
No. 3 Pennsylvania (Wharton) ranked 24th
No. 4 Harvard Business School ranked 17th
No. 5 Northwestern (Kellogg) ranked 38th
In its methodology, Bloomberg writes that it has wanted to offer a diversity index for several years, but this was the first year that schools provided data on race, ethnicity and gender in a standardized way that could be measured and compared. Schools provided percentages of the first-year MBA class of U.S. students who identify as White, Black, Asian, American Indian, Hawaiian Pacific Islander, Multiracial and Hispanic, and Bloomberg uses a multiplier that compares the makeup of each group in the GMAT pipeline compared to the U.S. population at large. That multiplier is then applied to each group’s true percentage at each school. (For what it’s worth, this is the same ranking that a Yale School of Management Dean couldn’t replicate in an outside analysis.)
Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.
WHAT B-SCHOOLS THINK OF THE DIVERSITY INDEX
Eric Askins, executive director of MBA admissions at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, sees value in diversity measures such as Bloomberg’s, and he’d like to see other ranking publications adopt DEI-driven metrics.
“I think the value is to encourage institutions to measure what matters,” he tells P&Q. “I think you can post on your website that you think something is valuable, you can talk about it, you can put window dressing on it. But if you align incentives to your values, that's only going to yield better results.
“Ranking and reputation is an important part of what business students look at, and we want to see ourselves as a top program that delivers on all the things that matter to students,” he says.
Eric Askins, Haas
However, he’d like to see the ranking go even further.
For example, while Bloomberg included results from 2 survey questions on LGBTQ+ inclusion in its “Campus Atmosphere” sections for individual schools, the results are not presented in an apples-to-apples comparison as are the other diversity metrics.
In the LGBTQ metrics, Haas scores well: 73% of LGBTQ students completely agree and 20% strongly agree that “social activities are generally inclusive towards LGBTQ students.” That compares to 69% of all respondents who completely agree and 21.8% who strongly agree. Similarly, 66.7% of LGBTQ students completely agree and 26.7% strongly agree that “LGBTQ students are given equal/adequate opportunity to participate in discussion and on teams.” Of all respondents, 71.8% completely agree and 21.2% strongly agree to the same statement.
“I think that's an important space, and I think gender as a spectrum is something that needs to be explored,” Askins tells P&Q.
Davidson, who has worked in DEI at Darden since 2008, says that a diversity index that focuses on head counts doesn’t show the whole picture. Head counts are variable, and they can be regionally influenced. A school that shows high percentages of women or underrepresented groups in a particular year isn’t necessarily a success. That comes in the trends, in showing improvements year over year.
“Paying a lot of attention to head counts isn’t bad, but it’s just not enough. And it can be misleading,” Davidson says. “If I were a student, I’d love to see a metric like a climate index where schools are reporting their students’ sense of not only feeling like they belong, but feeling like they can excel. If there were an index that was valid and reliable that could really capture ‘Are Black students thriving? Are Hispanic student, women thriving?’ That would be really helpful.”
WHY DIVERSITY MATTERS
Bernie Banks, Kellogg
Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management identifies collaboration as its most cherished value. It’s the school that put teams on the map, says Bernie Banks, Kellogg’s associate dean for leadership development and inclusion.
“That’s why this matters to us. To do collaboration well, you have to be inclusive,” Banks tells P&Q. “We believe collaboration is core to everything you do in an organization. But here's the bottom line: In a world that's marked by increasing diversity, diversity efforts don't fail because you can't find diverse people or ideas. They fail because you find them, and then you cultivate them to act in a homogeneous manner.”
Askins agrees. Many of the leaders in finance, technology and other business sectors come from the schools ranked by Bloomberg, and the diversity at those schools inevitably trickles up. A prime example: Haas produces the most finance interns in the West Coast and is among the top schools in producing leaders in the technology sector in the Bay area.
“I think we all benefit from seeing diverse perspectives in leadership,” Askins says. “But what is the unique value add when it comes to business schools? We are the pipelines that deliver those leaders to business, and we have to take that responsibility seriously.”
Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.
NEW DEI INITIATIVES
With or without a diversity index for ranking, top B-schools around the country are announcing new DEI programs and touting diversity gains in public announcements. Below are some examples, but is in now way an exhaustive list.
Berkeley’s Haas School was among the first B-schools to create a 5-year DEI Strategic Plan in 2018 and recently released an updated 2021-2026 plan. Among other initiatives, it developed scholarships for minority students, hired a director of diversity admissions while expanding its DEI team, and added a required class to its MBA program: Business Communication in Diverse Work Environments. In 2018 when it first dove into its DEI efforts, Haas had 11.9% underrepresented U.S. minorities in its MBA class; In 2021, it had 23%.
Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University recently announced two new classes, Strategic Business Solutions to Address Structural Racism and Diversity in Organizations.(Owen ranked 28th in P&Q’s latest ranking, and 61st for Bloomberg's diversity ranking.)
Georgetown McDonough reported its most diverse class in its 2021 MBA class profile, with diversity increasing from 38 to 40%, while its Executive MBA is 40% U.S. underrepresented minorities (up from 26% last year). (Georgetown ranked 24th in P&Q’s latest ranking, and 57th for Bloomberg's diversity ranking.)
Like many other B-schools, Kellogg (which ranks 5th overall in P&Q’s ranking and 38th in Bloomberg’s diversity index) has implemented several DEI initiatives in the last year: It launched a DEI pathway, akin to a minor, and its first ever climate survey. It raised $10.5 million last year for DEI programs, including $5 million for scholarships for underrepresented minority students. And more than 1,000 students, alumni, faculty and staff, and organizational partners volunteered for the Kellogg Inclusion Coalition that will work to advance DEI efforts and make recommendations to Kellogg leadership. Banks calls it the “merry band of volunteers.”
Its efforts appear to be paying off. From 2016 to 2020, the average percentage of U.S. underrepresented minority students was 18%; In 2021, it was 23%, according to class profile data provided to Poets&Quants.
“We know that heterogeneous teams outperform homogeneous teams when addressing complex challenges,” Banks says. “As the world becomes increasingly more complex and as the rate of change continues to accelerate, we have to have folks that can work well in concert with others who possess very different backgrounds, and who can find a way to unlock potential that otherwise would lie dormant.”
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