Citing the relatively low levels of minority representation in science and engineering, leaders of a National Academies committee working to increase diversity in those fields released a new report Thursday that shows the extent of the problem and makes recommendations on how to solve it.
The report—titled “Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America’s Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads”—shows that underrepresented minorities (African-Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans) represent 28.5 percent of the U.S. population but only 9.1 percent of college-educated Americans in the science and engineering workforce.
The National Academies are the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, National Research Council, and Institute of Medicine, which are federally chartered advisory organizations.
Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, chair of the Committee on Underrepresented Groups and the Expansion of the Science and Engineering Workforce Pipeline, which did the report under the auspices of the National Academies, said that, in order to triple the number of underrepresented minorities in the science and engineering workforce and make it match their proportion in the overall population, educators must collectively decide now to devote more time and energy to being intentional about turning things around.
“All of us have to look in the mirror,” Hrabowski told an audience of about 50 educators and others who gathered at the National Academies in Washington, D.C., for the release of the report. “All of us can do a much better job.”
Along those lines, the “Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation” report contains a series of recommendations, several of which have specific applications for institutions of higher education.
