POTSDAM -- Clarkson University School of Business Professor Stephen J. Sauer is the lead investigator in a study that found bias in the way analysts view firms led by black graduates of prestigious universities.

Analysts examining a firm and the qualifications of its top management team discount the educational background of African American managers who graduated from prestigious universities while more readily accepting the qualifications of white managers with the same college credentials, according to two experiments reported in the current issue of Organization Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

There is a summary of the study at http://www.informs.org/About-INFORMS/News-Room/Press-Releases/Financial-Analysts-Racial-Bias.

There is also a Forbes.com article on the study at http://blogs.forbes.com/danielfisher/2010/10/19/experiment-finds-race-trumps-a-prestigious-degree.