Corporate Group Nudges Top Minority Executives to Switch to Academia

A consortium of high-profile firms, including Chrysler Corp. and Citicorp, believes it has found the answer to the shortage of talented minority job candidates: Persuade top-notch minority business professionals to leave well-paying jobs at corporations throughout the country in order to pursue careers in academia.

That’s right. Academia. As in research and libraries and teaching. It’s all part of a new multimillion-dollar initiative called the “Ph.D. Project.”

In all, 67 colleges and the corporate sponsors are offering various scholarships, fellowships, and academic resources to minority professionals--if they forsake the boardroom for the classroom.

The hope is that as professors, these individuals will become mentors who will inspire future minority business graduates to new professional heights.

Between 1984 and 1993, more than 6,200 U.S. citizens were granted Ph.D.s in business, including such areas as accounting, finance, management and marketing, according to the National Research Council in Washington.

During that 10-year span, 2.4% of those business degrees were earned by African Americans; 2.3% by Asian Americans; just 1.3% by Latinos, and 0.4% by Native Americans.

Supporters of the Ph.D. Project say the lack of minority business school faculty is a root cause of the low turnout of graduates of color, which in turn creates a limited hiring pool for the corporate sector.

“We see direct linkages,” said Bernie Milano, secretary of the KPMG Peat Marwick Foundation and partner in charge of recruiting for the project.

Milano is convinced the project will work because it is a “broad, systematic approach” to the issue of workplace diversity. And if it helps diversify the country’s universities, all the better, Milano said.

Although many people support the Ph.D. Project’s goal of infusing corporate America with more faces of color, some question the program’s methods.

“The problem is that minorities aren’t breaking through the glass ceiling,” said Lee Pomeroy, a Wall Street executive recruiter with Egon Zehnder International in New York. “Now they’re going and taking away the intelligentsia, the brightest stars, and taking them off the management track for a theory.”

“My advice to someone (in the project) is to recognize that you are absolutely a pioneer and totally at risk because they’re betting, potentially, with these people’s lives,” he said.

For hundreds of individuals who attended a conference sponsored by the project last month, it’s a risk they’re apparently prepared to take.

Nora Urrea, 33, is a wife and mother of three small children. She holds a bachelor of science degree in biology and a master’s in business and manages a successful ophthalmology practice in Southern California.

To Urrea, the project is an opportunity for her to realize a longtime dream. “At my age, and having a family, I wouldn’t take such a tremendous step if I weren’t totally committed to this,” she said. Urrea said she wants to become a professor “to be a role model to other minorities” and because she is passionate about “testing and creating knowledge.”

Karl Lawrence of Miami, who is “not yet 30,” is a vice president at an architecture and engineering firm and already earns more than some Ivy League professors.

“This is the most difficult decision I’ve ever had to make, especially from a financial standpoint,” said Lawrence, who holds a master’s in business administration.