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> 57% of college graduates are women What's the percentage female graduates in STEM fields? The 57% may not be representative for the fields which matter for e

by sorum 8y ago

> 57% of college graduates are women What's the percentage female graduates in STEM fields? The 57% may not be representative for the fields which matter for engineers. Not saying the delta is big, I honestly don't know and am curious.

FiddlyPack 8y ago
Hey so I know this is n of 1 and off-topic, but as a liberal arts student, I went from music to signal processing to music theory to music analytics to generative music to software engineer. There can be a lot of STEM in non-STEM degrees. I did take a number of CS, acoustics, and electrical courses as a music major, but my degree still says music. I know once-English majors with a similar story of a passion for what computing can reveal/create around a discipline that resulted in rich software careers. I am over a decade out of college, and in my personal experience passion for computing is more relevant than having a STEM background in software development. All this to say, I’m not sure % STEM focused is necessarily a reliable indicator of “future software engineer.”
- agentx3r 8y ago
  For n=1, sure, not necessarily.
- busterarm 8y ago
  Roughly 1/3 of the engineers that I've encountered in my ~17 year career have music degrees (and one guy who went to ballet school and later wrote one of the most well-known O'Reilly books). And this is mostly on the ops side.
  - cellularmitosis 8y ago
    This seems to also be a running theme among clojurists, and the opening question on most episodes of the cognicast was inspired by this correlation.
    - busterarm 8y ago
      Oh man. I've never paid much attention to the Clojure community but Russ Olsen is great! Eloquent Ruby is probably in the top 5 as far as books that had an impact on my career.
emddudley 8y ago
Here is some data from the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_318.30.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_318.30.a... In 2017 there were 133,761 Bachelor's degrees conferred in Engineering, 20% of which were conferred to women. Computers: 71,420 degrees, 19% women Math: 24,073 degrees, 42% women Physical sciences: 31,268 degrees, 40% women
- roguecoder 8y ago
  Physics hardly any more applicable to software development than biology is, especially areas like biostats or neurophysiology that involve directly writing code. But these numbers sure suggest that something is wrong with computer science departments.
  - mpweiher 8y ago
    > sure suggest that something is wrong with computer science departments. Why? Why do men and women have to have the same preferences in what to study, in your opinion? Does the fact that 78% of students in veterinary science are female "sure suggest" that something is wrong with veterinary science? Since there are so many fields where women vastly outnumber men (and women significantly outnumber men overall in college) a corresponding skew in other fields is a necessary outcome: you simply run out of women to fill those seats, they are elsewhere.
    - andrewprock 8y ago
      The short answer is yes, all of the statistics which show a deviation from a priori gender balance suggest that there is "something" going on. That "something" is almost certainly cultural, since there is little evidence that any group based genetic hypothesis has explanatory power, whereas cultural forces have clearly been shown to impact gender balance. e.g. the right to vote.
      - mpweiher 8y ago
        > yes, all of the statistics which show a deviation from a priori gender balance Why do you think so? Regardless of what criteria you use to split human groups, you get non-equal distributions, because people are different. To me, exact equal balance everywhere would be a much stronger indication that indeed something very fishy is going on. > any group based genetic hypothesis Really? All children are born to women, none to men. Obviously cultural forces. Most women prefer men as mates. Most men prefer women as mates. Obviously cultural forces. Little infants and even little infant monkeys show gendered toy preferences. Obviously cultural forces. Women vastly prefer early childhood education as a degree. Obviously cultural forces.
EForEndeavour 8y ago
A quick search confirms your suspicion. The 57% female figure applies overall, but within STEM, the fraction of female graduates is low, except for life sciences: https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-in-science-technology-engineering-and-mathematics-stem/ https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-in-science-technolog... The section entitled "Few Women Are Earning Degrees in STEM, Except in the Life Sciences" states that 35% of STEM undergrads are female. For engineering and computer-related bachelor's programs, this drops to ~18%(!).
- some345 8y ago
  There are many factors to consider in order to interpret the stats. The data indicates that women are underrepresented in STEM field, but we can also argue that men are underrepresented in educational field. Why aren't there more women in fields like firefighters, oil rigs, dangerous jobs? Fundamentally, men and women are different both biologically and psychologically. To generalize, men are more interested in things and engineering and women are more interested in people and relationship. But that doesn't mean their intelligences differ. Intelligence expresses itself in different ways. If a little girl says to her parents that she likes math, it's not like her parents would say, "no, you can't like math, you should go play with your dolls, math is for boys". We can't equalize outcomes, there's no way we can have 50/50 across every field. What we can do is to equalize opportunity and level the playing field. Accepting women or men for a job just for the same of equal representation at workforce instead of evaluate their abilities for the job is just plain irresponsible.
roguecoder 8y ago
Between 2004 and 2014 women received 50.4% of undergrad degrees in STEM fields.
- EForEndeavour 8y ago
  This figure is higher that those cited elsewhere in the discussion thread. Could you provide a source?
  - klipt 8y ago
    https://ngcproject.org/statistics https://ngcproject.org/statistics > Women earned 57.3% of bachelor’s degrees in all fields in 2013 and 50.3% of science and engineering bachelor’s degrees.
    - EForEndeavour 8y ago
      Your truncated quote is woefully incomplete at best, and intentionally misleading at worst. The full passage reads as follows, emphasis mine: Women earned 57.3% of bachelor’s degrees in all fields in 2013 and 50.3% of science and engineering bachelor’s degrees. However, women’s participation in science and engineering at the undergraduate level significantly differs by specific field of study. While women receive over half of bachelor’s degrees awarded in the biological sciences, they receive far fewer in the computer sciences (17.9%), engineering (19.3%), physical sciences (39%) and mathematics (43.1%). More relevant points appear further down the page which illustrate what people talk about when they lament the underrepresentation of women in STEM: Women make up half of the total U.S. college-educated workforce, but only 29% of the science and engineering workforce. Female scientists and engineers are concentrated in different occupations than are men, with relatively high shares of women in the social sciences (62%) and biological, agricultural, and environmental life sciences (48%) and relatively low shares in engineering (15%) and computer and mathematical sciences (25%). For example: 35.2% of chemists are women; 11.1% of physicists and astronomers are women; 33.8% of environmental engineers are women; 22.7% of chemical engineers are women; 17.5% of civil, architectural, and sanitary engineers are women; 17.1% of industrial engineers are women; 10.7% of electrical or computer hardware engineers are women; and 7.9% of mechanical engineers are women.
roguecoder 8y ago
Hmmm, that excludes fields like anthropology and geography that the best developers I've worked with studied: understanding systems involving both people and technology is much harder than building an if-loop.

by sorum 8y ago

FiddlyPack 8y ago

Hey so I know this is n of 1 and off-topic, but as a liberal arts student, I went from music to signal processing to music theory to music analytics to generative music to software engineer. There can be a lot of STEM in non-STEM degrees. I did take a number of CS, acoustics, and electrical courses as a music major, but my degree still says music. I know once-English majors with a similar story of a passion for what computing can reveal/create around a discipline that resulted in rich software careers. I am over a decade out of college, and in my personal experience passion for computing is more relevant than having a STEM background in software development. All this to say, I’m not sure % STEM focused is necessarily a reliable indicator of “future software engineer.”

agentx3r 8y ago
For n=1, sure, not necessarily.
busterarm 8y ago
Roughly 1/3 of the engineers that I've encountered in my ~17 year career have music degrees (and one guy who went to ballet school and later wrote one of the most well-known O'Reilly books). And this is mostly on the ops side.
- cellularmitosis 8y ago
  This seems to also be a running theme among clojurists, and the opening question on most episodes of the cognicast was inspired by this correlation.
  - busterarm 8y ago
    Oh man. I've never paid much attention to the Clojure community but Russ Olsen is great! Eloquent Ruby is probably in the top 5 as far as books that had an impact on my career.

emddudley 8y ago

Here is some data from the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_318.30.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_318.30.a... In 2017 there were 133,761 Bachelor's degrees conferred in Engineering, 20% of which were conferred to women. Computers: 71,420 degrees, 19% women Math: 24,073 degrees, 42% women Physical sciences: 31,268 degrees, 40% women

roguecoder 8y ago
Physics hardly any more applicable to software development than biology is, especially areas like biostats or neurophysiology that involve directly writing code. But these numbers sure suggest that something is wrong with computer science departments.
- mpweiher 8y ago
  > sure suggest that something is wrong with computer science departments. Why? Why do men and women have to have the same preferences in what to study, in your opinion? Does the fact that 78% of students in veterinary science are female "sure suggest" that something is wrong with veterinary science? Since there are so many fields where women vastly outnumber men (and women significantly outnumber men overall in college) a corresponding skew in other fields is a necessary outcome: you simply run out of women to fill those seats, they are elsewhere.
  - andrewprock 8y ago
    The short answer is yes, all of the statistics which show a deviation from a priori gender balance suggest that there is "something" going on. That "something" is almost certainly cultural, since there is little evidence that any group based genetic hypothesis has explanatory power, whereas cultural forces have clearly been shown to impact gender balance. e.g. the right to vote.
    - mpweiher 8y ago
      > yes, all of the statistics which show a deviation from a priori gender balance Why do you think so? Regardless of what criteria you use to split human groups, you get non-equal distributions, because people are different. To me, exact equal balance everywhere would be a much stronger indication that indeed something very fishy is going on. > any group based genetic hypothesis Really? All children are born to women, none to men. Obviously cultural forces. Most women prefer men as mates. Most men prefer women as mates. Obviously cultural forces. Little infants and even little infant monkeys show gendered toy preferences. Obviously cultural forces. Women vastly prefer early childhood education as a degree. Obviously cultural forces.

EForEndeavour 8y ago

A quick search confirms your suspicion. The 57% female figure applies overall, but within STEM, the fraction of female graduates is low, except for life sciences: https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-in-science-technology-engineering-and-mathematics-stem/ https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-in-science-technolog... The section entitled "Few Women Are Earning Degrees in STEM, Except in the Life Sciences" states that 35% of STEM undergrads are female. For engineering and computer-related bachelor's programs, this drops to ~18%(!).

some345 8y ago
There are many factors to consider in order to interpret the stats. The data indicates that women are underrepresented in STEM field, but we can also argue that men are underrepresented in educational field. Why aren't there more women in fields like firefighters, oil rigs, dangerous jobs? Fundamentally, men and women are different both biologically and psychologically. To generalize, men are more interested in things and engineering and women are more interested in people and relationship. But that doesn't mean their intelligences differ. Intelligence expresses itself in different ways. If a little girl says to her parents that she likes math, it's not like her parents would say, "no, you can't like math, you should go play with your dolls, math is for boys". We can't equalize outcomes, there's no way we can have 50/50 across every field. What we can do is to equalize opportunity and level the playing field. Accepting women or men for a job just for the same of equal representation at workforce instead of evaluate their abilities for the job is just plain irresponsible.

roguecoder 8y ago

Between 2004 and 2014 women received 50.4% of undergrad degrees in STEM fields.

EForEndeavour 8y ago
This figure is higher that those cited elsewhere in the discussion thread. Could you provide a source?
- klipt 8y ago
  https://ngcproject.org/statistics https://ngcproject.org/statistics > Women earned 57.3% of bachelor’s degrees in all fields in 2013 and 50.3% of science and engineering bachelor’s degrees.
  - EForEndeavour 8y ago
    Your truncated quote is woefully incomplete at best, and intentionally misleading at worst. The full passage reads as follows, emphasis mine: Women earned 57.3% of bachelor’s degrees in all fields in 2013 and 50.3% of science and engineering bachelor’s degrees. However, women’s participation in science and engineering at the undergraduate level significantly differs by specific field of study. While women receive over half of bachelor’s degrees awarded in the biological sciences, they receive far fewer in the computer sciences (17.9%), engineering (19.3%), physical sciences (39%) and mathematics (43.1%). More relevant points appear further down the page which illustrate what people talk about when they lament the underrepresentation of women in STEM: Women make up half of the total U.S. college-educated workforce, but only 29% of the science and engineering workforce. Female scientists and engineers are concentrated in different occupations than are men, with relatively high shares of women in the social sciences (62%) and biological, agricultural, and environmental life sciences (48%) and relatively low shares in engineering (15%) and computer and mathematical sciences (25%). For example: 35.2% of chemists are women; 11.1% of physicists and astronomers are women; 33.8% of environmental engineers are women; 22.7% of chemical engineers are women; 17.5% of civil, architectural, and sanitary engineers are women; 17.1% of industrial engineers are women; 10.7% of electrical or computer hardware engineers are women; and 7.9% of mechanical engineers are women.

roguecoder 8y ago

Hmmm, that excludes fields like anthropology and geography that the best developers I've worked with studied: understanding systems involving both people and technology is much harder than building an if-loop.