February 7, 2014

Minorities, Women Still Underrepresented in STEM Fields

America’s science and engineering sectors have made strides toward building a more diverse labor force, but progress remains to be made, the National Science Board’s annual “Science and Engineering Indicators” report found. “There has been some general movement toward more diversity of participation in S&E [science and engineering] occupations,” the report, said. Asians, for example, made up 19% of scientists and engineers in the United States in 2010 ... far higher than their proportion in the general population, which was 5%. By contrast,

African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians and Alaska Natives, “historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups,” the report described, accounted for 10% of the country’s workers in science and engineering in 2010 ... up slightly from 7% in 1993, but still a far smaller proportion than their share of the general population, which was 26%.

Read the rest of this US News & World Report article.
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2 comments:

Ned Hamson said...

Will we still see study results like this in 2024? I first heard someone tell a room full of 1,000 NASA engineers the same thing in 1994. Today's and yesterday's engineers are not likely to be the one's to change things because if they were, things would already be different. What's the answer? Lots of agreement and budgeting to support the idea if we don't change this, we will decline significantly over the next 20 years as a nation.

Unknown said...

Ned - I pray that we aren't seeing the same study results 10 years from now. I do my part through volunteer efforts with BDPA ... an association of African American IT professionals.

We can't afford to lose the future by losing another generation of non-STEM ready students.