Diversity is a term that is very much in vogue these days. It is also a topic that can lead to heated discussions. It can also refer to many things. Diversity in gender, religion, caste, graduation backgrounds, economic status are just some of the ways in which modern society is trying to make a positive change.
The conversation is similar in B-schools. Without any artificial measures in place, a similar kind of crowd would be found in every MBA programme. But let us come to the question of why that needs to be rectified. Here are my thoughts on it:
Neither a great percentile nor an innate ability to tackle mathematics is what determines whether you shall be a good manager.
Exams like CAT are biased towards Engineers. I know that this is a divisive topic. I myself am an Engineer. But there is no denying some aspects of mental ability become easier for us because for the past 6 years, we have been dealing almost entirely with numbers and graphs. The same is not true for other backgrounds such as the Arts. But that in no way reflects that they would not as good, if not better, managers than anyone else.
Why not, you would ask, have an exam which includes some topics from other subjects as well? The reason being that it is easier to evaluate objective answers and does not allow any subjectivity and bias to creep in. But what this eventually results in is huge numbers of engineers in B schools while the other streams are rare. To remedy that, several B-schools have begun to give some extra marks to students of non-engineering backgrounds. How much extra is a good thing or what is the ideal ratio of engineers to non-engineers, these are issues that are beyond me. That is best handled by those with the numbers and the context.
But on the whole, I feel that since being a good manager is not entirely about being good with numbers (if at all), it is a welcome step to try and artificially introduce some diversity. At the end of the day, different streams of thought and approaches would only lead to a more balanced decision making.
Historically persisting inequalities need to be corrected.
Most of us would agree that in the past, women were not provided as many professional opportunities as men. Roles were defined and more importantly, ingrained in all our cultures. While this continues to improve, we are still far from being a society of equals. A cursory glance at the top boards of companies, industry leaders and past batches of graduated B school students would show how the gender balance has been skewed. The diversity measures go some way in correcting that. Of course, it is just about providing the initial platform. Same goes for caste diversity. The inequalities are as stark as in the case of gender, just not as easily noticeable.
As I mentioned earlier, what ratio we seek and what numbers we want is something that I am no authority on. Also, the long term goal is certainly to have an education system where each community, professional background and gender is present in roughly proportional ratios, with some reasonable standard deviation. There may well still be streams that have skewed ratios. But that skew should be due to an active choice and not constraints that a particular section of society faces. But until that is achieved, some artificial measures are certainly called for.
You may also like to read InsideIIM's reports on Gender Diversity & Academic Diversity in top Indian business schools.
*Featured image credits - GreenBiz