Race inequality has been an issue at business schools for decades, but the phenomenon is notably pronounced in the Boston area, the Boston Globe reports. A mere 5% of graduates who received business school degrees (both undergraduate and graduate) in the area last year were black—the national figure is 11%. Harvard Business School (HBS) and the MIT Sloan School of Management, both of which have campuses in or near Boston, had only 5% and 4% black graduates, respectively, last year. “Despite having some of the most excellent institutions in the country, these problems are real [in the Boston area],” the manager for multicultural programs at Babson College (who also earned a bachelor’s degree and an MBA from the school) told the Boston Globe.
Schools claim to be fighting back despite the low numbers—HBS and Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, for example, have recently established African-American unions and associations in addition to hosting retreats and programs aimed at recruiting minorities. “We want to make sure that business school is a place for everyone,” HBS professor and minority summer program leader Anita Elberse commented in the article.