Diversity training is de rigueur for today's college generation. First came Kermit the Frog singing "It's Not Easy Being Green." Next, classroom activities in which blue-eyed students received special privileges, while green-eyed ones were shunned. Now universities are awash in diversity offerings, from special residence-life programs to entire academic courses.

Yet despite all the attention paid to diversity-training programs, particularly at the college level, no one knows for sure how well they really prepare graduates for the next step: Dealing with the real-life diversity issues many will face when they start their first job.

Experts warn there is no way to quantify a relationship between campus diversity training and workplace acceptance of diversity. Still, that doesn't mean the training doesn't work.

New Attitudes Lead to New Behaviors

"We make efforts both inside and outside the classroom, because no single program can prepare students to be productive members of a workplace team," says Barry Magee, assistant director for diversity education for the CommUNITY Education Program at Indiana University. "We do gather data to see if people have new thought patterns or attitudes after our efforts. You can't really measure behavior, but I firmly believe new attitudes can lead to new behaviors.

Magee bases his belief on anecdotal evidence, such as letters and phone calls from graduates who tell him the programs were an important part of their development and understanding.

Indiana University's programs include interracial-dialogue and gender-talk projects and various classroom-specific programs. For example, students in education courses receive diversity training as part of their teacher training, while students in the business school focus on understanding global cultural differences.

A graduate now working for an oil company uses one of Magee's programs to run his own diversity-training program. "Our training definitely worked for him," Magee says.

Magee notices the importance of diversity training when college recruiters come to campus. "Companies want to hire graduates who are prepared for the real world," he says. "They seek out people who have gone through these programs."

Positive Changes

Anne McMahon, professor of management at Youngstown State University's Williamson College of Business Administration in Ohio and a strong advocate of diversity training, was frustrated that there were no comprehensive studies on the effectiveness of those programs. So she surveyed students on campus and found that students in her diversity-intensive courses had statistically significant positive attitude changes. For example, students self reported they were more apt to speak out against a racial joke or to propose diversity projects in other classes. Students without diversity training showed some attitudinal changes, but not all those changes were positive. For example, these students might be less apt to embrace a diversity project.

Less formally, she has found that many students refer to their diversity training in job interviews. Recruiters were once glad to discover that students understood the impact of diversity in the workplace. Now, she says, employers come to Youngstown expecting students to appreciate diversity.

Diversity Education's Importance

Diversity education is important, McMahon says, because "this is not a particularly enlightened community. In the 1950s, this was a prosperous manufacturing center. Now it's impoverished, and there's been a backlash against affirmative action. But when these students dig a little, they're amazed what they find. Now they're no longer afraid of diversity; they understand it and get it."

McMahon's courses center on projects in which the entire class must work together to create one diversity-related event. One class created a "diversity cookbook," which included stories about the intersection of culture and food. Another class delved into lower-income issues of housing, education and child care.

Magee says that undergraduates hoping to succeed in a diverse workplace can never get enough training. "It can't be just a one-time session that you check off," he says. "Students have to dig deep on campus and take advantage of whatever opportunity presents itself, in the classroom and out. Two people working together on a project, in class or at a job, can bring two very different experiences to the task. That's what makes teamwork so dynamic, creative and good."

However, Magee notes, diversity education does not end the instant a graduate lands a job. "We can give students a good foundation for going out into the world," he says. "But diversity training is a lifetime pursuit."