Corporate Recruiters Are Avoiding Colleges and Universities That Do Not Have a Racially Diverse Student Body

It is no secret that American corporations actively recruit blacks and other minority college students for management trainee positions once they graduate from college. Minorities are a growing segment of the work force at many American companies and these firms want a large group of black, Hispanic, and other minority managers to complement their other employees.

As a result, some colleges and universities whose student bodies are not racially diverse are having a difficult time attracting corporate recruiters. For example, at the University of Wisconsin, where the 29,000-member undergraduate student body is only 2.5 percent black, companies such as Alcoa and General Motors have stopped sending recruiters. The university reports that other companies such as Ford, Kimberly-Clark, and Hewlett-Packard have told career placement officers that they too will stop coming to Madison unless the university increases the racial diversity of its student body.

“Multicultural incompetence of University of Wisconsin graduates have prompted corporations to end or threaten to end their recruitment here,” Bernice Durand, associate vice chancellor for diversity and climate at the University of Wisconsin, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Copyright © 2006. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.