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Speaker 2: Well, the share of black students in the incoming class
Speaker 2: at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology plummeted after the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court effectively banned considering race as a factor in undergraduate
Speaker 2: admissions last year. Matt, you really, you know, like you
Speaker 2: got to look at the stories? Is like the great
Speaker 2: for a setup with our next guest.
Speaker 3: I sent you this story.
Speaker 2: You did, you did? That's what I said I was
Speaker 2: giving you.
Speaker 3: I thought you said I should look at the story.
Speaker 3: I send you this. No, I think it's absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 2: Well in the university said, they put this out yesterday.
Speaker 2: The class of twenty twenty eight is five percent blackt
Speaker 2: down from an average of thirteen percent in recent years.
Speaker 2: The share of Hispanic students in the class is eleven percent,
Speaker 2: and that's down from fifteen percent. I am sure.
Speaker 3: Well, the share of Asian students is now forty seven
Speaker 3: percent and it was forty two percent. So on the
Speaker 3: one hand, you know, it's a it's it's to their
Speaker 3: detriment this new class that they won't have as much
Speaker 3: representation from black people or from Hispanic people. On the
Speaker 3: other hand, you think what happened to the Asians before
Speaker 3: that we're getting we'ren't getting in like you know, they're
Speaker 3: getting the test scores.
Speaker 1: So you know, I know, I know.
Speaker 2: So all right, let's see what our next guest has
Speaker 2: to say about this. I'm sure he's got some thoughts.
Speaker 2: Let's head to Atlanta and Ed Smith Lewis. He's senior
Speaker 2: vice president of strategy at UNCF. Of course, the United
Speaker 2: Negro College Fund, and they support thousands of students and
Speaker 2: also HBCUs close to forty of them historically black colleges
Speaker 2: and universities. Ed, great to have you here. We do
Speaker 2: believe you've got some thoughts on this. You hear those
Speaker 2: MIT statistics and you think, what.
Speaker 4: When I hear those MIT statistics, I think, where's the
Speaker 4: opportunity in all of it? How do we start to
Speaker 4: sort of maybe reposition sort of the deficit or the
Speaker 4: change and the percentage of individuals that may or may
Speaker 4: not enroll in our Mits of the world and start
Speaker 4: to think more intentionally about how do we create more
Speaker 4: robust institutions that compare to MIT and such as such
Speaker 4: as not a conversation about who got into the Ivy League,
Speaker 4: but how is our higher education system really serving the
Speaker 4: needs of all of our students, regardless of which sort
Speaker 4: of medallion institution they may have gone to. How do
Speaker 4: we think about investing the resources of MIT and the
Speaker 4: opportunities that MIT provide and really start developing those in
Speaker 4: the other spaces and places where our students have been enrolled.
Speaker 3: I mean, ideally, any higher education institution is going to
Speaker 3: want to have a diverse class that benefits everybody in
Speaker 3: the class, right, and you want it to be so
Speaker 3: somewhat representative of the society in which you live. So
Speaker 3: if there's a deficit of black students or a deficit
Speaker 3: of Hispanic students, admissions Admissions is going to have to
Speaker 3: try and fix that. How can they fix it if
Speaker 3: they can't take, you know, race or ethnicity into account.
Speaker 4: Race may be one indicator of whether or not a
Speaker 4: student has or has not had the right set of
Speaker 4: opportunities or scored the right test or scored the right
Speaker 4: score or on the right test. But the reality is,
Speaker 4: if we look at other differentiating factors, like lived experience,
Speaker 4: where people are born, what high schools they've gone to,
Speaker 4: and really look at the institutional context around an individual's experience,
Speaker 4: you can likely get to some of the same results
Speaker 4: whatever without ever really having to say race. And while
Speaker 4: that's a good how do you do it?
Speaker 2: How do you do it well?
Speaker 4: Will you do it by looking at what schools individuals
Speaker 4: go to?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: How about we move away from the idea that we're
Speaker 4: going to take the highest s T score from the
Speaker 4: number one prep school as an admission requirement and say, well,
Speaker 4: if we want diversity, let's ensure that we're pulling students
Speaker 4: from all the types of institutions public, public high schools,
Speaker 4: private high schools, rural high schools. And you'll likely get
Speaker 4: to the same place if you diversify your geographic approach
Speaker 4: or your institutional type.
Speaker 2: So is this about looking at somebody who's maybe at
Speaker 2: a school system that isn't so great but did really
Speaker 2: well compared to their peers. Is that what you're talking
Speaker 2: about or something else? Or just being much more diverse
Speaker 2: in terms of where you look for students.
Speaker 4: Well, I think it's where you look and what you're
Speaker 4: looking for. At present, we're putting a lot of energy
Speaker 4: into test scores, and we all know, or at least
Speaker 4: higher education knows, that test scores actually are an indicator
Speaker 4: of success. You can look at what other opportunities was
Speaker 4: the student engaged in based on his or her contexts. Now,
Speaker 4: is it great that you have a high test score
Speaker 4: and someone who played the piano and an orchestra. Perhaps,
Speaker 4: But maybe that student who come from a rural area
Speaker 4: where they didn't have access to the same types of opportunities,
Speaker 4: but led a student organization or participated in community service
Speaker 4: heavily has the same type of tenacity and desire to
Speaker 4: grow and learn, maybe without the opportunities. So what you're
Speaker 4: looking for is trying to write size expectations on outcomes
Speaker 4: with expectations or inputs or opportunities those individuals have had.
Speaker 2: So are you like you're talking about the standardized testing?
Speaker 2: Is that in particular you're thinking is not a good thing?
Speaker 4: For sure?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I think suthardized testing is just rooted in sort of
Speaker 4: a systematic approach to getting an understanding of one's aptitude,
Speaker 4: And I think We've learned through differentiated approaches in K
Speaker 4: twelve that not everyone learns the same and if you
Speaker 4: don't learn the same, you likely don't test the same.
Speaker 4: And so how do we start to think about differentiated
Speaker 4: models of assessing a student's readiness to learn? And that's
Speaker 4: what we're saying. We're just looking for differentiated approaches here
Speaker 4: at UNCF we're a scholarship organization. We're actually looking at
Speaker 4: more cognitive opportunities, and we're moving away from sort of
Speaker 4: raw quantitative understanding to a qualitative one where we're educating
Speaker 4: our readers or our scholarship application scores on what can
Speaker 4: you look for and how a student thinks about his
Speaker 4: or her lived experience, what opportunities they had, how do
Speaker 4: they think about loss and failure as well as their
Speaker 4: wins in their writing, and how they communicate their experience
Speaker 4: and less about the test score.
Speaker 3: I know, I went to some public school graduations in
Speaker 3: the Midwest this year, and I noticed that each of
Speaker 3: these schools with classes of two or three hundred kids
Speaker 3: had one or two in the IVY leagues. And if
Speaker 3: you go to graduations here at you know, Nightingale, Bamford School,
Speaker 3: or collegiate if you look at you know, graduating classes
Speaker 3: at Deerfield or Andover private they're they're putting dozens of
Speaker 3: kids into the IVY Leagues, and I think that's part
Speaker 3: of their admissions process, and maybe the ivs need to
Speaker 3: rethink that at years.
Speaker 2: Some of it, though, is I will also say it's
Speaker 2: you know, generateational, you know families that legacies legacies in
Speaker 2: a big way. Right.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, if these Ivy League schools really want diversity,
Speaker 3: they're going to have to really rethink that admissions process
Speaker 3: because you can't always take a dozen kids from the
Speaker 3: most expensive boarding schools in the country and then ignore
Speaker 3: all these private schools in Flyover Country and talk to
Speaker 3: us about a CLAIM Accelerated Learning in Asset Investment Management.
Speaker 3: You're working to get a robust pipeline of students from
Speaker 3: historically black colleges and universities from HBCUs. So talk to
Speaker 3: us about this program and how you're doing it.
Speaker 4: No, we're really excited about the support from at its
Speaker 4: capital at phil Grows and its investment in project ACCLAIM,
Speaker 4: where we are fundamentally focused on providing the right opportunities
Speaker 4: to our students to take advantage of the robust economy
Speaker 4: that we have in our country. Project Acclaim has three
Speaker 4: simple objectives. Think number one, provide student experiences from an
Speaker 4: academic perspective that really enables them to understand through hands
Speaker 4: on experience, what does it mean to be an asset
Speaker 4: manager in this country? For many HBCUs, seventy five percent
Speaker 4: of our students are low income or come from low
Speaker 4: income families. Sixty percent of first in their generation in
Speaker 4: their family to go to college, their first generation students,
Speaker 4: and so the idea that you would have exposure to
Speaker 4: asset management careers are few and far between for many
Speaker 4: of the students. More importantly than having that exposure to
Speaker 4: asset management is that real hands on experience. Because you
Speaker 4: can learn from the textbook all day, but until you
Speaker 4: have a real experience, an opportunity to sort of touch
Speaker 4: the opportunity, we know that our students don't do as
Speaker 4: well with sort of been thrown into the defense. And
Speaker 4: so the question becomes, how can we move upstream in
Speaker 4: the asset management pipeline and start to invest heavily in
Speaker 4: real experience. That's what Project Acclaim is set to do.
Speaker 4: It will invest four million dollars into an investment fund
Speaker 4: that's madaged by students on the campuses of Morehouse and
Speaker 4: Howard University in our pilot years. This real investment opportunity
Speaker 4: to understand what does it take to ensure the risk
Speaker 4: profile of your investment are appropriate, to do the due
Speaker 4: diligence necessary to make an investment, to track, monitor and
Speaker 4: assess the progress against your portfolio is a real opportunity
Speaker 4: just going to be provided to these institutions, and with
Speaker 4: the support Avtage Capital, an opportunity to scale that to
Speaker 4: many more HBCUs over time. We're excited about this program
Speaker 4: not just because of that hands on experience, but the
Speaker 4: approach we're taken to do it. UNCF is leveraging a
Speaker 4: shared fund approach where Howard students and Morehouse students will
Speaker 4: operate under the same approach to understand what can we
Speaker 4: do to build the capacity of our institution stuff provide
Speaker 4: these kind of high relevant programs and so that also
Speaker 4: has the potential to scale well.
Speaker 3: And I mean the idea ultimately is to get them
Speaker 3: basically on Wall Street or in global Wall Street. I
Speaker 3: wonder if what I'm watching is especially industrial companies in
Speaker 3: the Midwest, you know, John Dee or Harley Davidson a
Speaker 3: Jack Daniels are shying away from their DEI initiatives, but
Speaker 3: I feel like Wall Street and American you know, the
Speaker 3: American public still embraces these de I initiatives. Is that
Speaker 3: what you're seeing as well.
Speaker 4: Well to your earlier point, to have diversity of perspectives
Speaker 4: is actually to have an organization that's well functioning and efficient.
Speaker 4: As you might imagine, when it comes to investment, it's
Speaker 4: always knowing where is the put going, And to have
Speaker 4: different perspectives sitting around the table means your due diligence
Speaker 4: is just better. And we've seen from minority asset managers
Speaker 4: sometimes one, two, three x outcomes compared to market rates.
Speaker 4: And that's just because sometimes you're asking a different question
Speaker 4: which also leads to a different answer. And so that
Speaker 4: diversity of perspectives, we think is a benefit to all companies,
Speaker 4: not just our asset management.
Speaker 2: Tons of research over decades have like pointed that out
Speaker 2: the importance of diversity in the boardroom, diversity to company.
Speaker 2: But having said that, you know, as companies, I do
Speaker 2: wonder at as companies increasingly are rolling back their DEI
Speaker 2: plans and strategies. As Matt just pointed, out. You know,
Speaker 2: Harley Davidson, you had Jack Daniel's maker Brown Foreman today
Speaker 2: we had a story on it Deer in company. How
Speaker 2: does it make it more difficult for maybe what you're
Speaker 2: trying to do to get that pipeline that is more diverse,
Speaker 2: whether it's going into financial services or somewhere else. And
Speaker 2: we've just got about forty five seconds.
Speaker 4: No, it's always been a difficult struggle, to say the least.
Speaker 4: We are trying to close systemic gaps and opportunity within organizations.
Speaker 4: But the reality is for those that are taking a
Speaker 4: step back at this moment, we're focusing our attention on
Speaker 4: those who are leaning in. We fundamentally believe if we
Speaker 4: can find the coalition of the willing, prove the value,
Speaker 4: that it becomes a market differentiator than those who may
Speaker 4: have stepped back for the moment might realize the business
Speaker 4: opportunity associated with this and come on board and eventually
Speaker 4: realize not only is it beneficial to the business, beneficial
Speaker 4: to inclusion generally in our country.
Speaker 2: All right, well, listen, super good to get some time
Speaker 2: with you. I really appreciate it. Good luck with your
Speaker 2: pursuits there. Ed Smith lewis a Senior VP of Strategy
Speaker 2: at the United Negro College Fund, joining us here on
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Business Week.
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