Black and brown youth account for significantly under-represented Science and Engineering (S & E) degree recipients at the bachelor’s degree level and above. In contrast and from a perspective of equity related to access to STEM courses and fields throughout primary, secondary, and higher education, White and Asian students are overrepresented among S&E degree recipients at the bachelor's level and higher. In 2020, White students earned 70 percent and Asian students 11 percent of S & E doctoral degrees.
I do not discount the enormous variation within the Asian community and recognize that these data do not apply to all subgroups. Within the white community, as with all communities, clearly coming from a higher class background is also impactful in terms of representation in STEM fields.
There has been progress among women, generally, albeit the data do not disaggregate further either by race/ethnicity or class. In 2021, 68% of female STEM workers had S & E-related jobs, including healthcare workers, managers, pre-college teachers, and technicians. Women made up 65% of workers in these S&E-related occupations.
In the STEM workforce, 46% of workers with at least one disability held middle-skill jobs, compared to 38% of those without a disability. Fewer STEM workers with disabilities were in S & E-related occupations compared to those without disabilities (29% vs. 37%). Another related finding is STEM workers without disabilities were evenly split between the skilled technical workforce (49%) and those with at least a bachelor’s degree (51%). Clearly, access to STEM occupations for those with disabilities remains a pressing policy issue. So glad to get access to this vitally important information.
The Statesman article below provides added detail on the wisdom of engaging the nonprofit sector with respect to alternative, tuition-free routes to STEM opportunities for youth from low-income communities that simply don't have the funds or competitive advantage—due to such things as under-funded schools at the K-12 level and consequently, an unstable teacher workforce—to attend college to attain advanced degrees in STEM. It does note the important role that the donor and tech sectors, as well as colleges and universities, can simultaneously play via partnerships with such programs to create pathways into college programs.
-Angela Valenzuela
Reference
(NSF 23-315). Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, National Science Foundation. Alexandria, VA. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — About one and a half years ago, Isaiah Hickerson woke up in the middle of the night having dreamt he was a coder.
The dream was totally random, as dreams so often are. He didn’t know a thing about coding.
He was 23, and though originally from California, he’d been living with his uncle in Miami. By day, he was answering phones in the grooming department at PetSmart. After hours, he was trying to figure out what to do with his life.
He’d tried social media. And he’d taken some community college classes in business and biology. He was lukewarm on both.
“I just felt empty,” Hickerson said. “I wanted to do something different, but I just didn’t know what it was. I didn’t have a passion for anything. And I didn’t know what passion felt like.”
Isaiah Hickerson, who left Miami to attend the nonprofit Marcy Lab School in Brooklyn, New York, is studying software engineering there. Credit: Olivia Sanchez/The Hechinger Report
He knows how far-fetched it sounds, but seeing himself coding in the dream changed him. Moments after he woke up, he was online trying to figure out what it all meant.
“I remember the whole entire thing and it’s crazy. I can’t make it up,” Hickerson said. “I literally got up right from there, 2 in the morning, probably 2:05. I remember the whole entire timeline because this is what shifted — my dream is what brought me here.”
By “here,” Hickerson means the Marcy Lab School in Brooklyn, New York, where he’s nearly finished with a one-year software engineering fellowship program. It’s not a college or a for-profit tech boot camp, but a nonprofit, tuition-free program designed to help students from historically underrepresented communities — like Hickerson, who is Black — get high-paying jobs in tech.
Related: Interested in innovations in the field of higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly Higher Education newsletter.
Across the country, colleges and universities offer scores of programs designed to help students from underrepresented groups succeed in STEM education and prepare for tech careers. Far less common are independent nonprofits that focus on students who don’t have the resources to go to college, don’t want to go to college or don’t believe they can succeed in a demanding STEM program. These nonprofits offer short-term training programs, for free, and help with job placement.
Two prominent examples, on opposite coasts, are the Marcy Lab School and Hack the Hood, in Oakland, California. Hack the Hood conducts 12-week data science-training programs and has recently partnered with Laney College, a community college in Oakland, to offer students a certificate of achievement in data science.
Data from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics shows that Black and Latino people earn science and engineering bachelor’s degrees at a disproportionately low rate, are underrepresented in the college-educated STEM workforce and earn lower salaries in those jobs than their white and Asian peers.
Each morning at the Marcy Lab School begins with “mindful morning” activities, including prompts for gratitude and self-reflection. Credit: Olivia Sanchez/The Hechinger Report
Achieving better representation means finding ways to get students the academic and financial assistance they need. The financial resources needed for a four-year STEM degree — or even a two-year degree — can be prohibitive. Opening up shorter avenues that are free — or significantly less expensive than for-profit boot camps — can at least put students on the path toward a STEM career. Programs designed with these students in mind give them training so that they have a shot to compete for STEM jobs with salaries that can lead to economic and social mobility. (Both the Marcy Lab School and Hack the Hood are nonprofits funded by donations from philanthropic groups.)
Related: When universities slap their names on for-profit coding bootcamps
“STEM is a white, cis, heteronormative field,” Weverton Ataide Pinheiro, an assistant professor in the College of Education at Texas Tech University, said. “And these people are the only ones that are being able to get a slice of the pie. Actually, they’re eating the whole pie.”
For Ataide Pinheiro, these free alternative programs have value, regardless of whether they result in a college degree, if they allow people from historically marginalized groups to get just one step further than they would have gotten without the training.
“We are desperate to just try to support these folks because we know money matters,” Ataide Pinheiro said. “We know that they will only be able to compete if they have certain training, and they might not be able to pay [for it].”
Reuben Ogbonna, one of the Marcy Lab School’s co-founders, said his team has worked hard to establish partnerships with tech companies to get software engineering job opportunities for Marcy students when they finish the program. Ogbonna said a team of former educators and salespeople introduces Marcy to companies, hoping to convince them to consider Marcy students for roles that would typically require a bachelor’s degree.
To prevent Marcy students from being “met with a glass ceiling somewhere down the line” because of their nontraditional training, Ogbonna said that Marcy asks the companies to treat its students the way they’d treat anyone else in the job interview process so that they can prove their skills and show employers that they deserve equal treatment as they progress in their
Achieving better representation means finding ways to get students the academic and financial assistance they need. The financial resources needed for a four-year STEM degree — or even a two-year degree — can be prohibitive. Opening up shorter avenues that are free — or significantly less expensive than for-profit boot camps — can at least put students on the path toward a STEM career. Programs designed with these students in mind give them training so that they have a shot to compete for STEM jobs with salaries that can lead to economic and social mobility. (Both the Marcy Lab School and Hack the Hood are nonprofits funded by donations from philanthropic groups.)
Related: When universities slap their names on for-profit coding bootcamps
“STEM is a white, cis, heteronormative field,” Weverton Ataide Pinheiro, an assistant professor in the College of Education at Texas Tech University, said. “And these people are the only ones that are being able to get a slice of the pie. Actually, they’re eating the whole pie.”
For Ataide Pinheiro, these free alternative programs have value, regardless of whether they result in a college degree, if they allow people from historically marginalized groups to get just one step further than they would have gotten without the training.
“We are desperate to just try to support these folks because we know money matters,” Ataide Pinheiro said. “We know that they will only be able to compete if they have certain training, and they might not be able to pay [for it].”
Reuben Ogbonna, one of the Marcy Lab School’s co-founders, said his team has worked hard to establish partnerships with tech companies to get software engineering job opportunities for Marcy students when they finish the program. Ogbonna said a team of former educators and salespeople introduces Marcy to companies, hoping to convince them to consider Marcy students for roles that would typically require a bachelor’s degree.
To prevent Marcy students from being “met with a glass ceiling somewhere down the line” because of their nontraditional training, Ogbonna said that Marcy asks the companies to treat its students the way they’d treat anyone else in the job interview process so that they can prove their skills and show employers that they deserve equal treatment as they progress in their
careers.
The Marcy Lab School is a nonprofit that offers students from historically disadvantaged groups a non-college pathway to careers in STEM. “We’re trying to reverse a really big problem that’s been around for a long time,” the co-founder said. Credit: Olivia Sanchez/The Hechinger Report
Since the Marcy Lab School opened in 2019, roughly 200 students have completed the program. In the first three years, about 80 percent of them graduated, and about 90 percent of those who graduated landed jobs in STEM with an average salary of $105,000 per year, according to Ogbonna. But in the past two years, during what Ogbonna called a tech recession, it’s been significantly more difficult for these students to get jobs. He said that this year, six months after graduating, about 60 percent of graduates had jobs.
Related: To attract more students to STEM fields in college, advocates urge starting in sixth grade
By pursuing an education at Marcy rather than attending a four-year college, students get three extra years to make money, build their savings and accrue wealth, Ogbonna said. And they won’t have student loans to pay off.
“We’re trying to reverse a really big problem that’s been around for a long time,” Ogbonna said. “And part of my theory of change is that if we can get wealth in the hands of our students earlier, it can come out exponentially for the communities that we’re serving.”
Both the Marcy Lab School and Hack the Hood also try to prepare students for what they might experience when they get into the workforce.
Hack the Hood serves students between the ages of 16 and 25 and, in addition to the technical curriculum, teaches students about racial equity, social justice issues and understanding their personal identities, said Samia Zuber, its executive director.
Zuber explained that these parts of the program help prepare students to confront issues such as imposter syndrome and to think critically about the work they are doing. For example, Zuber said, they teach students about racial bias in facial recognition software and the implications it can have for different communities.
This lesson was particularly striking for 24-year-old Lizbet Roblero Arreola, who recalled very little exposure to computer programming when she was in school.
“It really opens your eyes and makes you want to change it,” Roblero Arreola said, concerning the misuse of facial recognition data. “For me personally, I want to be somebody in those companies that doesn’t let that happen.”
For Roblero Arreola, a first-generation Mexican American, going to college was never a given. When she became pregnant with her first child shortly after graduating from high school, she decided to keep working in customer service jobs rather than go to college. Last year, after giving birth to her second child, she saw a friend post online about Hack the Hood. She’d been thinking about going back to school, and it seemed Hack the Hood could help ease her transition.
Roblero Arreola said that the Hack the Hood team supported her by helping her understand all the steps she would need to take to enroll at Laney College, including helping her figure out how to apply for financial aid. (Hack the Hood programs are tuition-free, but students who go on to pursue a certificate with Laney have to pay tuition there.)
After she finishes her associate degree in computer programming at Laney, she hopes to transfer to a four-year college and earn a bachelor’s degree. Eventually, she’d like to build a career in the cybersecurity field. She said she’s putting in the work now so that her children will have more opportunities than she did.
Related: Just 3% of scientists and engineers are Black or Latina women. Here’s what teachers are doing about it
These programs also serve students like Nicole Blanchette, an 18-year-old from a rural community in Connecticut, who chose Marcy Lab School over a traditional college experience.
Blanchette’s father has an associate degree, and her mother, who is Filipino, didn’t pursue postsecondary education. Blanchette always dreamed of going to college, and during her senior year of high school, she became intrigued by a career in tech. She hesitated, however, because “the stereotypical computer science student does not look like me.”
But an ad for Marcy Lab on Instagram made Blanchette think a tech career was possible.
She did the math and found that one year of living in New York would be cheaper than attending any of the colleges she’d gotten into, even with financial aid. She convinced her parents to spend the money they’d saved for her education on her living expenses while she attends Marcy.
Ogbonna and Marcy Lab’s other co-founder, Maya Bhattacharjee-Marcantonio, both started out as teachers and recruited the first class of Marcy students from their personal networks and from community organizations in Brooklyn.
Now, roughly 30 to 40 percent of Marcy Lab’s students are coming straight out of high school. Ogbonna said that for some of these students, “academic, economic and social barriers prevent them from being able to access a college that they can verify has strong outcomes.” They often believe they can’t afford any wrong turns. And for those who’ve already had some college, there’s often urgency to get a job because they need to pay back student loans or contribute financially to their households.
“Some of them were thinking about going to the short-term, very expensive coding boot camps,” Ogbunna said, and see a tuition-free program like Marcy Lab as “a less risky option.”
After feeling directionless and uninspired, Hickerson, who first thought about a career in coding after that vivid dream, now says he loves learning, and complex problem-solving tech challenges only make him want to learn more.
Before he started learning to code, he said he never knew what it felt like to be passionate about something. Now, when he talks about coding, what he’s learning in school and the career he hopes to build in software engineering, he doesn’t seem to ever stop smiling.
Related: To attract more students to STEM fields in college, advocates urge starting in sixth grade
By pursuing an education at Marcy rather than attending a four-year college, students get three extra years to make money, build their savings and accrue wealth, Ogbonna said. And they won’t have student loans to pay off.
“We’re trying to reverse a really big problem that’s been around for a long time,” Ogbonna said. “And part of my theory of change is that if we can get wealth in the hands of our students earlier, it can come out exponentially for the communities that we’re serving.”
Both the Marcy Lab School and Hack the Hood also try to prepare students for what they might experience when they get into the workforce.
Hack the Hood serves students between the ages of 16 and 25 and, in addition to the technical curriculum, teaches students about racial equity, social justice issues and understanding their personal identities, said Samia Zuber, its executive director.
Zuber explained that these parts of the program help prepare students to confront issues such as imposter syndrome and to think critically about the work they are doing. For example, Zuber said, they teach students about racial bias in facial recognition software and the implications it can have for different communities.
This lesson was particularly striking for 24-year-old Lizbet Roblero Arreola, who recalled very little exposure to computer programming when she was in school.
“It really opens your eyes and makes you want to change it,” Roblero Arreola said, concerning the misuse of facial recognition data. “For me personally, I want to be somebody in those companies that doesn’t let that happen.”
For Roblero Arreola, a first-generation Mexican American, going to college was never a given. When she became pregnant with her first child shortly after graduating from high school, she decided to keep working in customer service jobs rather than go to college. Last year, after giving birth to her second child, she saw a friend post online about Hack the Hood. She’d been thinking about going back to school, and it seemed Hack the Hood could help ease her transition.
Roblero Arreola said that the Hack the Hood team supported her by helping her understand all the steps she would need to take to enroll at Laney College, including helping her figure out how to apply for financial aid. (Hack the Hood programs are tuition-free, but students who go on to pursue a certificate with Laney have to pay tuition there.)
After she finishes her associate degree in computer programming at Laney, she hopes to transfer to a four-year college and earn a bachelor’s degree. Eventually, she’d like to build a career in the cybersecurity field. She said she’s putting in the work now so that her children will have more opportunities than she did.
Related: Just 3% of scientists and engineers are Black or Latina women. Here’s what teachers are doing about it
These programs also serve students like Nicole Blanchette, an 18-year-old from a rural community in Connecticut, who chose Marcy Lab School over a traditional college experience.
Blanchette’s father has an associate degree, and her mother, who is Filipino, didn’t pursue postsecondary education. Blanchette always dreamed of going to college, and during her senior year of high school, she became intrigued by a career in tech. She hesitated, however, because “the stereotypical computer science student does not look like me.”
But an ad for Marcy Lab on Instagram made Blanchette think a tech career was possible.
She did the math and found that one year of living in New York would be cheaper than attending any of the colleges she’d gotten into, even with financial aid. She convinced her parents to spend the money they’d saved for her education on her living expenses while she attends Marcy.
Ogbonna and Marcy Lab’s other co-founder, Maya Bhattacharjee-Marcantonio, both started out as teachers and recruited the first class of Marcy students from their personal networks and from community organizations in Brooklyn.
Now, roughly 30 to 40 percent of Marcy Lab’s students are coming straight out of high school. Ogbonna said that for some of these students, “academic, economic and social barriers prevent them from being able to access a college that they can verify has strong outcomes.” They often believe they can’t afford any wrong turns. And for those who’ve already had some college, there’s often urgency to get a job because they need to pay back student loans or contribute financially to their households.
“Some of them were thinking about going to the short-term, very expensive coding boot camps,” Ogbunna said, and see a tuition-free program like Marcy Lab as “a less risky option.”
After feeling directionless and uninspired, Hickerson, who first thought about a career in coding after that vivid dream, now says he loves learning, and complex problem-solving tech challenges only make him want to learn more.
Before he started learning to code, he said he never knew what it felt like to be passionate about something. Now, when he talks about coding, what he’s learning in school and the career he hopes to build in software engineering, he doesn’t seem to ever stop smiling.
***
This story about STEM education programs was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.
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