Thousands of students will earn the Master of Business Administration degree this spring from universities across America. No doubt the newly minted MBAs will be knowledgeable about accounting, conversant in high finance, and armed with an array of other quantitative skills.

But what about their non-quantitative skills, the so-called "soft skills"? Will they be able to motivate people, work in teams, and communicate effectively? If these new graduates are to climb the corporate ladder, they will need to be savvy in these skills, too. This is especially true with the changing demographics of the American work force and the increasing globalization of business interactions.

"Many individuals are likely to find themselves directing--or under the direction of--someone demographically dissimilar," business professors Derek R. Avery and Kecia M. Thomas write in the journal "Academy of Management Learning & Education" (2004). "Hence, understanding diversity and its impact of workplace relationships has become a critical business competency."

While many business schools offer courses in diversity, the degree of proliferation of such courses among U.S. business schools is not known. The business schools' primary accrediting organization, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) does not keep lists of courses offered by individual schools, according to Juliane Iannarelli, AACSB research manager.

However, as a sample, I looked at the course listings of BusinessWeek magazine's top 10 U.S. business schools to see what they offered in diversity management. The magazine ranks MBA programs based on student surveys, recruiter surveys and frequency of faculty articles in scholarly publications. Diversity training is not a rating factor to be on the BusinessWeek list. The latest MBA ranking is for 2006. All of the schools in the top 10 are very well known and highly regarded.

I obtained information from the schools' course catalogues and administrators to determine if the MBA programs offered a course in diversity management (with an intra-U.S. focus), or a course in cross-cultural management (with a multi-national focus), or both.

The results are that none of the top 10 MBA schools offer both diversity management and cross-cultural management courses, six offer one or the other, and four offer neither.

Sources: BusinessWeek, school course catalogs, interviews and correspondence

In contrast, the situation is quite different for companies that compete to be on The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity®. DiversityInc says that all of the 2008 Top 50 make diversity training mandatory for managers, and 80 percent make it mandatory for the entire work force.

This year, one of the top 10 schools has begun a major initiative concerning diversity. The Kellogg School launched the Interdisciplinary Center on the Science of Diversity (ICSD) with the goal "to promote academic, managerial and educational research and dialogue about the social impact of diversity," according to its web-site description.

"One of the things on the long list of things we would like to do with the center is development of course material and a repository of syllabi on the web site," wrote Kellogg associate professor Katherine W. Phillips, an ICSD co-chair, in response to an e-mail inquiry.

Other business schools--beyond the top 10--are sharing information on diversity course content as well. The Academy of Management, a leading professional association concerning management and organizations, held a professional-development workshop, "Teaching Courses on 'Diversity in Organizations'" at its 2007 annual meeting.

What is the future of courses in diversity management and cross-cultural management at America's business schools? The AACSB, in its Eligibility Procedures and Standards for Business Accreditation, does not address diversity courses per se. The standards do, though, require that "Consistent with its mission and its cultural context, the institution must demonstrate diversity in it business programs."

The AACSB says, in interpreting this standard, that "Accredited programs must demonstrate commitment and actions in support of diversity in the educational experience."

To their credit, business schools that offer at least one course in diversity management are adding essential value to the educational experience of tomorrow's business leaders.