Posted on 11/28/2007 1:38:47 PM PST by bs9021
Beyond Bias and Barriers
by: Heyecan Veziroglu, November 28, 2007
Panelists at the National Press Club’s ‘Newsmaker’ Media Briefing on October 31, 2007 focused on the under-representation of women and minorities in 15 science and engineering disciplines and in key university posts.
“B.S. degrees have fallen in engineering and science faculties,” Dr. Donna Nelson from Oklahoma University exclaimed. “Minorities are less likely to enter and remain in science and engineering when they lack mentors and role models”, Dr. Nelson added. She finds that women and minorities continue to be under-represented. What’s more, the number drops when you go to the Ph.D. attendees. Then, who’s going to shape the next generation?
Dr. Irving P. McPhail, the Executive Vice President of the National Action Council for Minorities In Engineering, Inc., said math and science education is a challenge to the greatness of the U.S. More pre-engineering courses must be taken to increase the motivation for women and minorities to pursue work at the college level, he argued. Race should not affect educational destiny.
Dr. Nelson conducted a 2007 Study funded by grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. She looked at faculty positions at the top 100 departments in each discipline and compared the results to a similar study done five years earlier. She said, “If minority professors are not hired, treated fairly, and retained, minority students perceive that they will experience the same. This will not encourage them to persist in that discipline.” The 2007 study emphasized the following points:
(Excerpt) Read more at campusreportonline.net ...
Ummm....how about the smartest candidates, regardless of race or gender?
Move along there is nothing to see here.
A senior at Stonehill College called in to WRKO a while back. He’s in a Financial Degree program. He has already gone on six job interviews. He said that 75% of Undergrads at Stonehill are in Social Worker programs and NONE have gone on an interview. They are waiting to get state jobs. Tits on a Bull!
More women than men are in college and are graduating with degrees. The authors of this study chose the 15 areas in which there are still more men than women so as to be able to find a "problem."
This is much like the studies that show boys outperforming girls in 3 areas of study in high school, while studiously ignoring the fact that girls outperform boys in 12 areas.
Methinks I see a solution. Pull African Americans and women (kicking and screaming) out of curriculums where they are over represented, like African Studies or Gender Studies, and force them into Engineering. Limit the number of women that can take Social Work or Education classes.
Why do you need a mentor that looks like you.
Wouldn’t a mentor that nurtures you interest and ability be more useful?
One of the women astronomers was a bit goth, and belly danced with lighted bracelets and a flaming rod to demonstrate a star system's center of mass.
Then again, you have that MIT biology prof that broke down in tears when Clintonista Larry Summers said that men and women might be different.
What also is important is for people from your peer group to also achieve so you don’t think something is out of the realm of possibility.
Lets say your parents didn’t go to college. If your friends parents, and their siblings go to college and graduate, you tend to think that is normal and something you can do since you see other people achieve it.
But you can apply that to any endeavor. If someone from your neighborhood gets to play a pro sport, you realize that it can be done.
"Youth do not want to be a scientist." I would think a PhD could put a simple sentence together. If ya' want to see a real minority situation (note I didn't say problem), look at professional aviation. Despite great efforts, virtually no women make it to airline status anymore, now that the so-called affirmative action programs have been curtailed.
Another facet of this the pay differential among graduates. Liberal arts majors make between $30-$35K a year, assuming they can get a job. A technical major will get $50-60K and will have no problem finding a job. Women are the majority of undergrads. However they are a definitive minority in the technical fields. The majority of women are choosing liberal arts . The result is a pay differential in graduates with a significant gender component.
The cause of this is a pernicious practice called free choice. There are no gender attributes associated with any college major, the students, the vast majority of them adults, make choices for themselves. There results are the product of a large number of individual choices.
I think it is a good thing
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