The Impact of a Rollback of Affirmative Action on the Nation's Major MBA Programs

• Author: Robert Bruce Slater,Theodore Cross
• Published date: 01 September 1998
• Date: 01 September 1998
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/0045-3609.00017

The Impact of a Rollback

of Affirmative Action

on the Nation’s Major MBA Programs

THEODORE CROSS AND ROBERT BRUCE SLATER

The affirmative action rollbacks in Cali-

fornia and Texas have produced severe

reductions in African-American college,

law, and medical school admissions in those

states. The sudden and radical change in

African-American enrollments necessarily

leads one to the racial scoring gap between

blacks and whites on standardized business

school admission tests. In a race-blind admis-

sions system, admissions officers must neces-

sarily rely heavily on test scores. Because of

grade inflation and extreme differences in aca-

demic rigor at various undergraduate institu-

tions, grade-point averages (GPAs) from

different schools are of little value to officials

who must decide whether or not to admit a

given student. In a race-blind admissions envi-

ronment, scoring results on standardized ad-

missions tests will necessarily lead to the

rejection of all but a tiny percentage of black

applicants.

BLACK PROGRESS IN JEOPARDY

Blacks and other minorities have it right. Get

an MBA at a prestigious business school and

everybody loves you. Employers are choosy and

they honor the diplomas from the most selective

schools. Over the past 30 years, blacks have

made powerful inroads into the strong business

schools. We estimate that over the past three

decades the nation’s 25 leading business

schools have produced about 10,000 highly

qualified black MBA graduates. Prestigious and

academically rigorous institutions such as the

Wharton School at the University of Pennsylva-

nia and the Darden School at the University of

Virginia have graduated many hundreds of

well-prepared young black MBAs who are now

working their way into the ranks of manage-

ment at America’s largest and most influential

corporations. In 1996 blacks made up more

than 10% of the first-year class at the highly re-

garded business school at Duke and more than

7% of the students at the prestigious Kellogg

School at Northwestern University.

Many strong institutions, including UCLA,

Cornell, and Duke, for example, have been far

more likely to accept black student applicants

than whites. For example, at Duke’s Fuqua

School in 1996, nearly 40% of the black appli-

cants were accepted for admission compared to

only 26% of white applicants. This strongly sug-

gests, but of course does not prove, that many

of the leading business schools are giving sig-

nificant admission preferences to black

students.

NOW WE CAN MEASURE THE RACIAL

GAP ON THE GMAT TEST

The important question is: What would happen

to the acceptance rate of black students at

these business schools if, due to executive or-

der, legislative fiat, judicial ruling, or change in

university policy, admissions officers were no

longer permitted to use race as a positive factor

in the admissions decision? Unpublished

information obtained from the Graduate

© 1998 Theodore Cross and Robert Bruce Slater. Published by Blackwell Publishers,

350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK.

Theodore Cross is the editor and Robert Bruce Slater is the manag-

ing editor of The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.

Business and Society Review 100/101: 81–84