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After Hopwood: The Dean's Position on Diversity
by Dean Robert May
While employers prize all our graduates, minority and non-minority alike, the Texas Business School is proud to have one of the largest minority student populations of any major business school. UT's size has made us an especially important player in the market for diverse managerial talent.
I say "market," because UT does not just value diversity for its own sake, we have a mandate from our business partners to achieve it. Our business partners have found that to compete worldwide, they must deal with and represent people of all kinds. This is a strong reason why many companies value diversity. It's also a reason why they value UT, since we have been seen as a leader in this area.
We became a leader through three interlocking strategies: recruiting, affirmative action in admissions, and affirmative action in financial aid. The Fifth Circuit Court changed all that in 1996. The court's decision in the case of Hopwood vs. The University of Texas Law School severely restricts our efforts to attract students from underrepresented groups.
The decision dealt a sharp blow to all schools in Texas that are trying to achieve diversity. In the simplest terms, we are now barred from considering minority status in admissions and from providing minority-based financial aid to those admitted. Whatever you may think of affirmative action, it was an effective tool in attracting minority students. Without affirmative action in admissions and financial aid, the Texas Business School is seriously limited in its ability to offer a positive program to attract the best and brightest minority students.
I should note here that many, many minority students have been admitted over the years with no special consideration. While they have been stigmatized by the existence of affirmative action, they accepted the stigma in the interest of seeing the University making positive efforts to attract minorities, thus overcoming some of the left-over negative feelings from when UT was legally segregated.
While we no longer have some of the tools of the recent past, we are not taking this lying down. We have begun a more aggressive and far-reaching recruiting campaign in collaboration with our current students. We're getting the word out to all prospective applicants that UT is one of the best opportunities in the world for future business leaders of all backgrounds.
We comply with the Hopwood decision -- we must. At the same time, we are making every reasonable effort to reach prospective minority students to assure them that they are very welcome here and that, if they seek the highest academic standards and commensurate opportunities, this is the place for them.
However, our efforts at recruiting qualified applicants will not work without competitive financial aid. As I write this, many of our state's best-qualified minority applicants are receiving competitive financial aid offers from out-of-state schools where Hopwood does not apply. Fortunately, two outside organizations, the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management and The Texas Ex-Students' Association, have stepped into the financial-aid gap. They have offered to accept designated contributions of financial aid to encourage minority students to attend The University of Texas. These organizations are receiving contributions, selecting students to receive the aid, and disbursing the funds. I'm grateful that they are able to do this, since the University cannot. Without their help, the best-qualified minority students would continue to go out of state, leaving us out of the game.
The bottom line is that UT must provide companies with the talented business students that they need to achieve a diverse workforce. If we do not, the companies will go elsewhere. We cannot allow this to happen, and we will not. Our program is market-driven, and the market demands diversity.
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
