Civil Rights Commission to Explore Ways to Encourage More Minorities to Enter Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Gail Heriot

Does affirmative action decrease the likelihood that minority students will pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics?  The evidence suggests yes ...

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights will conduct a briefing on "Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics" on Friday, September 12, 2008 at 9:30 a.m. at 624 Ninth Street, N.W., Washington. D.C. 20425.  We’re planning on hearing evidence from various speakers on how to encourage more minority students to major and go on to careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.  Good jobs are available in these fields, and colleges and universities should attempt to ensure that minority students who wish to fill them are in a position to compete on an equal basis.

Part of the problem is that while African American and Hispanic students initially express interest in STEM majors, they drop these majors in higher numbers than other students.  There’s no single way to deal with this.  Among the angles that will be addressed is the apparent success of Historically Black Colleges and Universities in graduating students in these areas.  One important aspect of the problem, however,  may be well-meaning but ultimately misguided affirmative action.  It may be hurting rather than helping.

Some research on this issue has been around for a long time, but has received far less attention than it deserves.  In 1996, Rogers Elliott and his co-authors looked at why African-American and Hispanic students are less likely to follow careers in science than white or Asian-American students.  They published “The Role of Ethnicity in Choosing and Leaving Science in Highly Selective Institutions,” in which they found that African-American and Hispanic students at elite colleges and universities are about as likely as white or Asian-American students to start off intending to major in science.  But they abandon those intentions in larger numbers.  The authors concluded that mismatch probably played a major role:

Why are so many talented minority students, especially blacks, abandoning their initial interests and dropping from science when they attend highly selective schools?  The question has many possible answers, but we will begin with the factor we think most important, the relatively low preparation of black aspirants to science in these schools, hence their poor competitive position in what is a highly competitive course of study.  As in most predominantly-white institutions, and especially the more selective of them, whites and Asians were at a large comparative advantage by every science-relevant measure ..., and on the composite predictor, the Academic Index, they were at a 1.75 [standard deviation] advantage.

That it is the comparative rather than the absolute status of the qualifications is clear from two strands of evidence.  First students at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have quite low average SAT scores and high school grades ... but they produce 40% of black science and engineering degrees with only 20% of total black undergraduate enrollment. For example, with SATM scores averaging 400, half the students at Xavier University are reported to be majoring in natural science; with scores somewhat higher (about 450), Howard University is the top producer of black undergraduate science and engineering degrees....

[T]hat brings us to the other strand of evidence for the competition argument. .... [Our evidence] shows how science degrees are distributed within each institution as a function of terciles of the SATM distribution.... Put concretely, a student with a SATM score of 580 who wants to be in science will be three or four times more likely to persist at institutions ... where he or she is competitive, than at institutions ... where he or she is not.  (Boldface supplied.)

Note that this is an argument against attending an elite college or university on any sort of preference.  Legacy preferences come to mind.  If you’re third generation college student who is hoping to go on to medical school, for example, it may be a mistake to attend the elite college your mother and grandmother attended (and have been contributing to since)  if your SAT and high school grade point average don’t really measure up.  The competition may end up souring you on STEM.  Consider going to a school at which your entering credentials put you in the top third of the class or at least in the top two thirds.

Rogers Elliott will be testifying at the briefing.  I am looking forward to hearing from Richard Sander, the UCLA law professor and economist who published "A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools," 57 Stan. L. Rev. 367 (2004), at the briefing.  He has begun a systemic analysis of math and science undergraduate education at the University of California in an effort to confirm or refute Elliott’s thesis.   I've not yet had a chance to read about his results, but I have been told that they tend to corroborate Elliott.

Comments

[tehag]

Professors in the Sciences, Engineering, and technical fields who were in favor of affirmative action for the humanities have no reasonable arguments why AA shouldn't be applied to their fields as well. I have degrees in both history and computer science. I dearly hope that AA is applied with the same intensity to the sciences as it was to the humanities. I'm sure it will have the same results. I look forward to departments of alternative race, class, gender sciences.

tehag

[dearieme]

It's different in science: you have to share the chem lab bench with your classmates.

[james wilson]

I do not have degrees in history and computer science, but I can read, and it is obvious females will not ever reach into advanced math and hard sciences any more than I could. This is not even a remotely close call. Honest data, both before and after it is twisted, shows repeatedly that 80% of males are similar to females in math, but that is not the portion that will ever use it except to count change and avoid really stupid career decisions. Those 20% of men are both unusually lacking or elevated.
But it is those especially rare 1% of peculuar elevated brains that will take home all the cookies, and they are 99% male. At every level--high school, undergrad, graduate, Nobel.
The world is full of frustrated males who were formerly engineers, who could not do what they would love to do because desire and work-ethic were not a substitute for plain talent when the rubber hit the road. No reason we cannot have many more failed AA female engineers for them to commiserate with. But math and science? They will not get to second base even with the degrading crutch of affirmative action.
A fairly large single dose of estrogen will not damage a man. A fairly small dose of testoterone will kill a woman. That compound is everything in the development, or lack of it if you prefer, of the male brain.

[yet another rice alum]

Based on what I've seen, we should not be limiting the encouragement to AA qualified candidates. We need more (in (old?) Rice terms) SE's (science-engineering) than academs across the board.

[Schwerpunkt]

STEM is a bandaid (ahem, adhesive bandage) solution for an overall lower quality of rationalism in schools, especially in the sciences. Are we not in a post AA world, where we need to create systems that provide higher capacity for all rather than targeting a few select groups who seem, after over forty years of social science intervention, to remain in a lower socio-economic standing requiring more and more external supports. What makes Asians exempt from AA? How good are "whites" really doing across the board? How are Central Asians doing in this country? Or Native Americans? Or your favorite social/cultural/linguistic group? If STEM is the new "New Math" it should be for all children all the time. Perhaps then we'd produce a more knowledgeable population overall.