B-School Aid To Minorities Jumps in '69

Harvard Business School will double the fellowship aid provided for minority group students next year. About $300,000 will be budgeted for 54 grants, planned mostly for blacks, Mexican-Americans and Indians.

The goal of the admissions office, according to Paul Tierney, administrative assistant for the MBA Program, is to include a representative quota of the nation's minority groups by 1972-73 in each class of between 600 and 700 students. This will mean about 90 minority group students in that year, with a projected allocation of $550,000.

Conceived last year, the aid program placed 27 minority group students in the first year of the Business School's MBA Program this Fall. The admissions office expects this figure to be 54 for next year, 70 in 1970-71, 90 in 1971-72, and 90 in each class for 1972-73.

Tierney added, however, that these projected figures of students are not definite and could become more or less depending upon the success of the program.

Tierney said that "most of the recruiting is being done by the black students." Almost all of the Business School's 32 black students are making weekend trips to different schools as spokesmen for the admissions office. The participation of black students in admissions recruitment followed meetings earlier this year between black students and an admissions group.

Richard Lowery, a black first-year student at the Business School, said that his trips were "so far, so good," and that other black students he had talked with felt the same. Lowrey added that he is in favour of black students' participation in admission because "we can evaluate certain people with certain types of background better than other people without that background."

The effort to attract Mexican-Americans and Indians to the Business School is being carried out largely by College Relations Group of the Alumni Council in Southern California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah.

Tierney added that the average fellowship per student next year will be $4000.