Thoughts on DEI
Is DEI dead or if it isn’t will it die in the next few years? SEO has been severely weakened and return offers are lower for DEI.
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Based on the most helpful WSO content, DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives are still active, but their effectiveness and perception vary across industries and firms. Programs like SEO (Sponsors for Educational Opportunity) and MLT (Management Leadership for Tomorrow) remain key players in fostering diversity in finance, particularly in investment banking. However, there are concerns about the sustainability and impact of these initiatives.
Some WSO threads highlight skepticism about DEI's long-term viability, especially during economic downturns or periods of tighter hiring. For instance, during recessions, companies may prioritize performance and cost-cutting over DEI goals, as seen in past cycles. Additionally, criticisms have been raised about the quality of candidates being perceived as "diversity hires," which can undermine the credibility of these programs.
Despite these challenges, DEI is unlikely to disappear entirely. Many firms have institutionalized these initiatives, and there is growing pressure from stakeholders, including clients and employees, to maintain diverse and inclusive workplaces. However, the effectiveness of programs like SEO may depend on their ability to adapt and continue providing value, such as mentorship, technical training, and interview preparation, to underrepresented candidates.
If you're navigating this space, it’s crucial to focus on building strong technical skills and networking to stand out, regardless of the broader trends in DEI. Programs like SEO and MLT can still provide valuable resources and connections, especially if you engage with them early in your academic or professional journey.
Sources: 43 Diversity Recruiting Programs at Investment Banks - The Most Exhaustive List, Diversity in CRE, Teller's Comprehensive Guide to Diversity Recruiting, https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/investment-banking/ending-diversity-programs-for-good-when-will-it-happen?customgpt=1, Looking for Recruiting Advice
Historically, the problem with DEI in banks has always been the overemphasis on surface level diversity along with the lack of addressing the real institutional problems that exist. Let me ask you: With all the DEI hiring banks have been going on, have they really moved the needle in terms of their actual diversity? Because in my experience, it's laughable how many actual minorities get hired. That's because of a few reasons. 1) DEI in large corporations is seen as largely performative and not actually achieving a larger goal of creating a more equitable and diverse workplace, and 2) the problem has always been that minorities have less access to the places top banks recruit at, or knowledge of the timelines of many of these companies. In fact, one of the most damaging things banks have done to their DEI pipelines has been moving the recruiting season up so far. FGLI-many of which are minorities-will not have heard of IB likely until their sophomore or junior year when returning interns speak about it, and at that point it's too late to recruit for internships.
If banks want to actually do something positive, it isn't about creating some pipeline for students. It isn't about just interviewing more minorities. It's about fundamentally changing how banks recruit. If GS held events at a Texas, California, or Florida state school, they would likely get a lot more Hispanic recruits. If they held events in Georgia, NC, or HBCU's(which they do already) they could get so many more people applying to their programs.
So it's more about creating a long term lasting pipeline where students are more aware of opportunities made available to them than just saying "Hey, if you're a minority, apply to our sophomore program" because, well, you're going to get the same base of people hyper aware of IB early and end up doing nothing to actually create diversity.
Yes but that takes hard work :(
Explain how Chinese American and Indian American kids (who are disadvantaged in every single way through the recruiting process) can place lights out every year while being a far lower % of the population than DEI minorities? This, in itself, makes DEI nonsensical when there are groups far more disadvantaged than them and less in population than them that place far far better.
Because they're a higher proportion of college graduates and higher percentage of top schools most places recruit from? DEI is meant to be about providing opportunities to students who haven't heard of IB or these places before. It fails because all it does it provide pipelines for already privileged students from top schools over really talented people who just ended up at lower ranked schools, usually because they are FGLI and didn't really understand the college admissions process.
Chinese / Indian Americans combined make up 3.5% of the US population. African / Hispanic Americans (who benefit the most from DEI) make up 34% of the population. This fundamentally does not make sense. Why should DEI punish Chinese / Indian Americans who grind hard from the same lower / middle class backgrounds (most of whom have poor immigrant parents) to get into ivy league schools? The population that DEI benefits is vastly larger (almost 10 times) than the population that it actively hurts.
Don’t even bother blaming it on college admissions, because we’re all aware of how elite schools frequently discriminate against Asians. And even if you say that Asians are wealthier than DEI minorities on average, the sheer difference in populations means that there are more wealthier DEI minorities in America than there are wealthy Asians.
Average income of Chinese American households have 82k in household income, Indian's at 199k. That's well above the national average, at 70k. 61% of Asian Americans have college degrees, compared to the national average of 38%. I don't think you realize just how tough FGLI is. Even FG is really hard, because you have no one with any idea how to navigate the systems and basically have to learn it all yourself.
Population size is a terrible indicator of general wealth and attainment of education. This is a terrible argument to make. The percent of people in the Ivy leagues that are Asian far surpasses the percent that are Hispanic and black combined.
Which is worse? Being Asian and having a slight mark down because your family is able to support you living a middle class life with a 2 parent household and strong support for education, or having a small bonus growing up in poorer neighborhoods with strong disadvantages in your education, a higher likelihood of growing up in poverty and crime, with a significantly higher chance of growing up with only one parent who does not have a college education and cannot guide you.
This is just barely true. 29% of Asian households earn more than 200k a year. There are 25M asian americans, meaning 7.25M high income households. There are 113M hispanic and black americans combined. They have an average 6.75% above 200k, coming out to 7.48M households. But also, in colleges, you have a 10-15% of most colleges being foreign born, and the largest percent of those are Chinese, and those students almost always pay in full. So if you're counting in foreign students too, then Asian households do make more.
It isn't a zero sum game. Trying to help Hispanic and Black Americans who are impoverished is not going to mean Asian Americans lose out.
They hate us because they ain’t us🔥
Ok arguments aside, can we all agree GWI or Women programs are the most unethical and unnecessary…….
I’m not a minority and this isn’t a defense of DEI, but if I were you, I’d pick a different argument. Right now, what you’re basically saying is:
At first glance, that sounds compelling. But here’s the issue: you’re assuming that Chinese and Indian immigrants in the U.S. are representative of their populations back home. They aren’t. In fact, the “disadvantage” you point to during recruiting ignores the much bigger advantage that comes before recruiting, namely, who actually gets to immigrate here in the first place.
Immigration policy creates a massive selection bias. Think about the ways someone from India or China can get into the U.S.:
Notice a pattern? Every pathway is gated by either money, advanced education, or specialized skills. In other words, the U.S. isn’t bringing in “average” Indians or Chinese. Out of nearly 3 billion people across those two countries, only about 10 million live here. That’s the top 1%, the elite tail of the distribution.
Sure, not every immigrant from those backgrounds thrives here. But on average, the overwhelming majority are highly educated and relatively privileged compared to the broader populations they come from. And this isn’t ancient history either, most of these immigration policies ramped up after the 1990 Immigration Act. Some estimates suggest 60-70% of Chinese and Indian immigrants in the U.S. arrived after that law, meaning the majority of today’s cohort is drawn from this highly selective process. The pre-1990 wave looked very different, and I'd expect that to be the group you tend to see with more poverty.
So when you point to Chinese and Indian Americans “outperforming” DEI groups, you’re really comparing apples to oranges. On one side, you’ve got the hyper-selected, top tail of Indian and Chinese families, the only ones who could clear the barriers to immigrate here. On the other side, you’ve got the average of U.S.-born minority populations. That’s not evidence against DEI; it’s just evidence of how powerful selection bias can be.
this is true, as someone who studied high school in india, the average performance of the class was no different than what you'd expect from US high school students, there is a huge selection bias, especially in the US, since US immigration favors indians that come from richer and/or more educated backgrounds.
the only difference is that the curriculum in india tends to be more dense than what is taught in the US in high schools, but an average indian high school has no more genuises than what a US high school would have.
It's taking a hit but not dead.
Banks (and other professional service firms) do DEI because corporate clients believe in it. Corporate clients believe in it because somehow or another, they all end up with these massive strategy/PR/image teams (internal or external) that tell them to do whatever the trendy thing is. And for whatever reason, they always jump on it super hard. First it was ESG, then it was DEI.
Side note: I think that's a documentary in itself. Exploring how it became so that these massive corporations with all their money and access to strong talent, allow these total midwits to guide them on trend-chasing and they buy it hook, line & sinker.
Anyway, now that DEI isn't the cool thing anymore, corporations aren't obsessing over it and professional service firms aren't feeling the client pressure to do it themselves.
But it's still going to happen to some degree because there's always the chance it comes back. So while it won't be like the period of peak DEI when the most unqualified URMs were landing good roles, it will still be like half that much.
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