It' s very interesting to note where the debate about diversity is taking place. It is taking place primarily in political circles. Here at the college Fund, we have a lot of contact with top corporate leaders none of them is talking about getting fid of those instruments that produce diversity. In fact, they say that if their companies are to compete in the global village and in the global market place, diversity is an imperative. They also say that the need for talented, skilled Americans means we hale to expand the pool of potential employees. And in looking at where birth rates are growing and at where the population is shifting, corporate America understands that expanding the pool means promoting policies that help provide skills to more minorities, more women, and more immigrants. Corporate leaders know that if that doesn' t occur in our society, they will not have the engineers, the scientists, the lawyers, or the business managers they will need. Likewise, I don' t hear people in the academy saying, 'Let' s go backward. Let' s go back to the good old days, when we had a meritocracy' ( which was never true -- we never had a meritocracy, although we' ve come closer to it in the last 30 years). I recently visited a great little college in New York where the campus has doubled its minority population in the last six years. I talked with an African American who has been a professor there for a long time, and she remembers that when she first joined the community, there were fewer than a handful of minorities on campus. Now, all of us feel the university is better because of the diversity. So where we hear this debate is primarily in political circles and in the media -- not in corporate board rooms or on college campuses. The word 'imperative' in the first paragraph most probably can be replaced by ______.