Dear Commons Community,

It must be a poor news day for The Chronicle of Higher Education to be citing a report recently released by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).  Long-known as one of the most conservative, neoliberal think tanks in the country, nobody except other right-conservatives take AEI seriously.  AEI receives extensive funding from the likes of the ultraconservative Scaife and Koch families. The study, entitled: “Quality Assurance in Other Sectors: Lessons for Higher Education Reformers” by Kevin J. James lays out lessons from four industries—health care, job training, charter schools, and housing finance—that could inform efforts to improve the quality of higher education. With reference to charter schools,  here is an excerpt from the Executive Summary.

“The most fundamental lesson that emerges from the charter sector is that building a parallel path for market entry can fundamentally change the supply side of a quasi-market such as higher education. Char­ter schools did not emerge from a complete overhaul of public schooling. Instead, they emerged because policymakers created space for new schools whose leaders were willing to be held accountable for student outcomes. Likewise, in higher education, reforming the accreditation process directly will be a long and difficult road. But that should not prevent policymak­ers from creating space for promising organizations that are willing to be held accountable for their stu­dent outcomes.”

Charter school in many parts of the country have had modest gains at best and undermine the funding of public schools.  In many cases, they also “cream” the better students from the public schools.

If The Chronicle must report on materials produced from organizations such as AEI,  it should do so with a big asterisk indicating that it represents a completely partisan viewpoint.

Tony

Source:  NSF

Dear Commons Community,

Charles Blow examines gender and racial segregation in STEM fields in his New York Times column today.  Citing data from the National Science Foundation (see chart above), he points to a gloomy future because of the small percentages of  females and minorities going into STEM occupations.

“Few women and minorities are getting STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) degrees, although STEM jobs are multiplying and pay more than many other careers.

This raises the question: Will our future be highly delineated by who does and who doesn’t have a science education (and the resulting higher salary), making for even more entrenched economic inequality by race and gender?

According to the NSF: “STEM job creation over the next 10 years will outpace non-STEM jobs significantly, growing 17 percent, as compared to 9.8 percent for non-STEM positions.”

And yet, the group says, we are not producing enough STEM graduates; other countries are moving ahead of us.

When you look at women and minorities, the situation is even more bleak…

The Associated Press said in 2011 that “the percentage of African-Americans earning STEM degrees has fallen during the last decade” and that this was very likely a result of “a complex equation of self-doubt, stereotypes, discouragement and economics — and sometimes just wrong perceptions of what math and science are all about.”

It continued: “Black people are 12 percent of the United States population and 11 percent of all students beyond high school. In 2009, they received just 7 percent of all STEM bachelor’s degrees, 4 percent of master’s degrees and 2 percent of Ph.D.s, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.”

It doesn’t get better in the workplace. In a 2013 editorial, The New York Times pointed out: “Women make up nearly half the work force but have just 26 percent of science, technology, engineering or math jobs, according to the Census Bureau. Blacks make up 11 percent of the work force but just 6 percent of such jobs and Hispanics make up nearly 15 percent of the work force but hold 7 percent of those positions.”

Even when minority students do get STEM degrees, there seems to be a disproportionate barrier to their finding work in those fields. “Top universities turn out black and Hispanic computer science and computer engineering graduates at twice the rate that leading technology companies hire them,” an October analysis by USA Today found.

Furthermore, the paper reported in December: “In 2014, leading technology companies released data showing they vastly under-employ African-Americans and Hispanics. Those groups make up 5 percent of the companies’ work force, compared to 14 percent nationally.”

This issue did not suddenly appear but has been building for several decades.  Initiatives by federal and state governments have failed to ease the situation.  What is obvious is that early on in child and youth development both in our culture and in our schools, women and minorities start moving away from mathematics and science as education and career choices.  We need new ideas!

Tony

NOTE:  After this posting was made, I was made aware of a website that provides a list of thirty-five initiatives that encourage more women to enter into the cybersecurity field.