Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
News
Report: STEM Gap Widens for Underrepresented Minorities
5/2/2008
It probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise to our readers, but research released this month shows an expanding ethnicity gap for Americans pursuing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. A new report from the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) reveals that the number minority students pursuing STEM degrees and careers has flattened out or even declined in recent years.
The study, "Confronting the 'New' American Dilemma, Underrepresented Minorities in Engineering: A Data-Based Look at Diversity," was funded by the Motorola Foundation, authored by the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology (CPST), and supported by the National Science Foundation. It calls on policymakers, businesses, and educators in K-12 and higher education to adopt "genuinely high expectations for our young students of color, [remove] systemic barriers to underrepresented minorities' participation in college, [develop] a national STEM workforce development policy, and [form] business partnerships that promote untapped populations."
Among the findings in the report is that the percentage of bachelor's degrees in engineering awarded to black students declined significantly from 1995 to 2005, from 3.3 percent to 2.5 percent. It also found that while three key underrepresented minority (URM) groups--African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans--constitute some 30 percent of the overall undergraduate student population in the United States, they receive only about 12 percent of the degrees awarded in engineering.
"We must look out for America's strength in the global economy, and to do that, we must encourage untapped resources into the STEM pipeline," said United States Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson in a statement issued to coincide with the release of the NACME report. "So many of our minority youth are not prepared to take on jobs in critical science and engineering fields, and this is a problem Congress can--and must--address. I commend NACME for working toward a more diverse and competitive engineering workforce, and I support them in their efforts."
Other findings from the study include:
Recommended Reading
- Fixed-Mobile Convergence: Dartmouth Beefs Up Cell Coverage, Cuts Costs
Problems with cell phone coverage aren't uncommon on college campuses. There are two main reasons: The beefy structure of historic buildings can block cellular reception within walls, and, on more remote campuses outside cities, signal coverage can be light.
- Thompson Rivers U Deploys Unified Digital Campus for ERP
Thompson Rivers University (TRU) in British Columbia has selected SunGard Higher Education's Banner Unified Digital Campus (UDC) to integrate its ERP systems.
- DV Kitchen Web Video Publishing System Released
DVcreators.net has released DV Kitchen, a new video encoding and publishing application for Mac OS X designed specifically for creating materials to be posted on the Web.
- NEC Debuts 4 Education Projectors
NEC this week debuted four new projectors targeted toward education applications, along with a new MultiSync LCD display. The new NP-series projectors are entry-level models started at $899 but are designed to provide high light output, support for closed captioning, and built-in networking capabilities.
- Security Researchers Uncover Spring Framework Vulnerability
Software frameworks are enjoying enormous popularity these days among a range of developers. It's popularity well earned; frameworks provide powerful tools for building more flexible and less error-prone applications. They generally enhance developer productivity with out-of-the-box functionality. And they can free developers to focus on features instead of common coding tasks.
- 3PAR Server Arrays Integrate Fat-to-Thin Processing
Utility storage provider 3PAR has announced the release of the 3PAR InServ T400 and T800 Storage Servers. The new hardware is built on the company's third-generation InSpire architecture, featuring the 3PAR Gen3 ASIC with integrated fat-to-thin processing.
