Knowledge-based Economy Requires Diversity, Group Asserts

The nation faces social and economic crisis unless America succeeds in promoting and taking advantage of racial and ethnic diversity, according to a report released last week by the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF).

In Investing in People: Developing All of America's Talent on Campus and in the Workplace, chief executive officers of leading corporations and presidents of prominent universities note that while the U.S. minority population is steadily increasing, members of most racial and ethnic groups are not making sufficient educational strides. As a result, the nation is headed for a crisis of workforce skills

and knowledge, the group contends.

The report posits "a large number of the people who will be available to work [in the future] will be minorities — who currently lag behind whites in their training and educational credentials." It warns that without the required investments in improving education for all Americans, tomorrow's workers will not be ready to meet the challenges of a knowledge-intensive economy.

The report further calls on business and institutional leaders, policy makers, and the general public to become actively involved in promoting and expanding diversity efforts. It outlines several important steps that can be taken to foster diversity and provide equal opportunity and quality education to all Americans, including:

• Encourage corporate foundations to provide support for diversity initiatives and to share the programs and their results with professional peers.
• Support and strengthen existing outreach programs that focus on: the value of attending college, ways to prepare students and assist them in applying for and attending college, and the importance of lifelong learning.
• Create programs where they do not exist.
• Provide the resources to ensure that teachers are prepared to work effectively with racially and ethnically diverse students.
• Urge national policy makers to increase the amount of the Pell Grant to its congressionally authorized annual maximum of $5,800 per student. (The 2000-01 maximum Pell Grant per student was $3,750.)

The report is the work of a special Diversity Initiative Task Force convened by the BHEF in 1999 to explore issues related to racial and ethnic diversity in America. A PDF version of Investing in People: Developing All of America's Talent on Campus and in the Workplace is available at: http://www.acenet.edu/bookstore/pdf/investing_in_people.pdf