While the value of employing a diverse group of management scholars certainly is evident, schools can’t hire more minority professors if they are not graduating from business doctoral programs.

"In 1994, there were four African-Americans in the United States who received doctorates in accounting. Four. Not 40. Not 400. Four," laments Peter C. Thorp, vice president of the Citigroup Foundation and co-founder of the Ph.D. Project. "We cannot put pressure on schools to do a greater job of diversity in the faculty ranks if there are no candidates in the pipeline."

So why haven’t more African-, Hispanic- and Native-Americans been drawn to–and, more importantly, through–the Ph.D. pipeline?

Like Rosette, many minorities do not consider careers in academia because they don’t know about the opportunities or haven’t seen other minorities following this career track. Others don’t want to risk giving up the financial and professional security of a corporate career for what, in the short term, means "a big cut in salary, a big cut in status and lots of work," says Marc Ventresca, assistant professor of organization behavior at Kellogg.

Also, many prospective minority doctoral candidates are first-generation college graduates. For some, the notion of investing even more time, money and effort into a Ph.D. may be difficult to swallow, even though annual salaries at top business schools start at $85,000 to $100,000.

"When I left IBM to go to Kellogg, my family thought I was nuts," says Fuqua Marketing Professor Gerri Henderson, Kellogg Ph.D. ’95. "I was the highest-earning person in my family and they couldn’t understand why I would leave a good job to go back to school."

The Ph.D. Project was created in 1994 as a way to combat these perceptions and show more minority professionals the intellectual value and flexibility of a career in business academia. Since the program started, more than 23,000 minorities have contacted the Ph.D. Project, and more than 4,500 have applied to attend its November conference. Of those, almost 2,000 have been invited to attend.

"We decided to go after minorities in corporate America," Milano says. "If these people are harboring any interest in becoming a professor and making a difference in the lives of others, we want to tap into that."

The efforts seem to be working.

Of the approximately 22,000 doctoral-qualified business professors in the United States today, only about 388 are underrepresented minorities. Come September, however, more than 400 African-, Hispanic- and Native-Americans will be enrolled in business school Ph.D. programs. Of these students, 132 have entered via the Ph.D. Project gateway.

"The first thing we were told when we started the Ph.D. Project was that minorities are not interested in getting their doctorates," Milano says. "Clearly, we have refuted that."

For the most part, these minority students will stay with the program. In fact, the dropout rate for the Ph.D. Project scholars is between 5 percent and 6 percent, while that rate for all Ph.D. students in the United States is between 25 percent and 33 percent, Milano says. This means the number of minority business professors in the United States could double within the next five years.

"When we started this, there were only 28 minorities who received a doctorate in business," Milano says. "Now it looks like we will be producing almost 70 a year. No one thought we could ever attract the numbers that are being attracted."

And the kind of people the program is attracting are not making this decision lightly, he adds. "They are giving up careers. They are moving families. They are changing lifestyles to go back to school for four or five years."

Further, because the Ph.D. Project supplies these students with a wealth of information about the Ph.D. process and life as an academic, they enroll "with their eyes wide open," Milano says. "There should be no unpleasant surprises."

Kellogg feeds the pipeline

As the Ph.D. Project’s Milano notes, Kellogg is helping to lead the way in diversifying the country’s management faculties. Each year Kellogg works to enroll underrepresented minorities in its Ph.D. programs, with most joining the school’s Organization Behavior and Marketing departments. Since 1993, the school has graduated 11 underrepresented minorities. Of these, 10 have gone on to teach in a business program.

In addition to Grier and Henderson, these graduates include: Melissa Thomas-Hunt ’97, assistant organization behavior professor at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis; Jacquelyn Thomas ’97, assistant marketing professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business; Matthew Clayton ’96, assistant finance professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University; and Tiffany Galvin ’98, assistant professor of organizational strategy and international management at the University of Texas at Dallas’ School of Management.

"Kellogg is distinctive for its successful track record in regard to the minority scholars who have graduated from our doctoral programs," says Ventresca, one of the faculty members dedicated to the school’s diversity initiatives. "The numbers are numerically small, but proportionately substantial."