6 ms·

How CMU Increased the Proportion of Women in Computer Science (2013)

36 points by superlucy 13y ago

dengnan 13y ago
No offence. But I would be more interested in how they increased diversity without lowering the bar.
- teraflop 13y ago
  Maybe you should read the article, then.
- cschmidt 13y ago
  It sounds like the only thing they did with admissions was to not look at previous programming experience as a major factor. I was admitted to a Chemical Engineering college program, despite the fact that I had no previous high school experience in fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and the rest. No one thought that was strange. Why is CS so different that you have to be a hot-shot programmer before you enter?
  - jamesbritt 13y ago
    Where is the hot-shot requirement?
    - cschmidt 13y ago
      > In the past, admissions gave preference to people with lots of previous programming experience.
      - jamesbritt 13y ago
        Right. Lots of exerience doesn't equal "hot shot" though.
  - khawkins 13y ago
    CMU is a top tier school. Why should you deny a hot-shot programmer admission for someone who has a passing fancy? Judging "potential" instead of a candidate's past work and experience reeks of affirmative action.
    - cschmidt 13y ago
      You are totally using the candidate's past work and experience to judge them. I'm sure those that get in have outstanding AP tests in math and science, great test scores, etc. A hot-short programmer would have that experience counted as well. The point is that programming is not the only type of experience they looked at. That's the same as it is for most other technical degrees (like my ChE). And there isn't any preference based on gender, so this is nothing like affirmative action. It is just saying that bright technical people can learn programming, and don't need to come in as an expert. Also, computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes [1]. [1] http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Computer_science http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Computer_science
    - gamegoblin 13y ago
      They aren't giving them negative weight, they are just looking forward. I know plenty of guys who went into uni with a bit of java experience (AP CS in highschool or something similar). So yeah, they know your basic control flow and OOP. But when it comes to how they will perform in N years, it means nothing. Any intelligent student without experience could (and did!) surpass the "more experienced" programmers by graduation time. If someone is the next programming wiz of that year, I'm sure they will be viewed as having plenty of potential and get in. If someone has a year or two of bad Java, they aren't viewing that as any better than someone with a good quantitative background. That's not affirmative action, it's foresight. Anecdotes, not data, but I know plenty of people who learned Java, C#, or JS in highschool, some even did internships, yet someone who hadn't coded before 2nd year uni soared past their skill level within a year because he was a generally smart guy with good math and logic skills. So should the people with a bit of experience be assumed to have more potential? No. Should somehow who's been coding their whole life and it's their number 1 hobby be assumed to have more potential? Yes. Not because of their experience, but because of their passion.
    - 13y ago
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    CS, much like art and music, is something that any sufficiently motivated individual will start doing far before they turn 18. (They differ from chemeng in this manner.) Both CMU art and CMU music require a portfolio review or audition. http://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/art-required-portfolio-review http://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/art-required-portf... http://www.music.cmu.edu/pages/audition-portfolio-review http://www.music.cmu.edu/pages/audition-portfolio-review
    - sp332 13y ago
      Art and music are not unusual things to get into. But computer programming is often not presented as an option to anyone, especially women. So plenty of motivated and talented people might not even be introduced to it, or take it seriously.
      - yummyfajitas 13y ago
        Anyone with a Facebook account could have typed "learn to program" into Google rather than poking people in the farm while eating candy (or whatever people do on facebook these days). If a person chose not to take programming seriously, that's on them.
        scarmig 13y ago
        So, women who get into CMU but disproportionately haven't been exposed to programming are in that situation because they were too busy playing Farmville?
        yummyfajitas 13y ago
        I have no idea what they were doing - the point is that a Facebook account indicates the opportunity to use the internet. There has literally never been more information/tools available to potential programmers than there is today - free online coding schools, tutorials, stackoverflow, wikipedia, anything you want. Not to mention free compilers - when I was a kid, Borland C++ cost money. I mention Facebook somewhat sarcastically because it's a service with no shortage of women. If women can be on Facebook, they can also be on Github if they choose to be. There was never an easier time to learn programming, for free, while sitting at home, without even putting on pants, than today. The secret of the patriarchy: http://bit.ly/w0iWlY http://bit.ly/w0iWlY
- Nelson69 13y ago
  Not lowering the bar, changing the metrics and possibly even raising the bar. I had some conversations with a couple professors there before I graduated in the mid-1990s, they saw it as a two fold problem. The geek culture makes it hard for anyone not within it regardless of gender, second they saw that MIT, Stanford, and some other top schools had more alumni donations and also tended to have more technology startups and such closely related to the school which also sort of affected the school's income but also affected future placement of current students which has a pretty large impact on getting the best students in the future. The thought at the time was that the geek culture was just bad for the school, period, they produced a lot of talented engineers but maybe not a lot of really successful people in the bigger picture. I don't remember the exact numbers but I want to say something like over 50% of the SCS students switch majors out of SCS or left CMU, maybe even more. I want to say 250 students were pre-SCS and something like 50 graduated, but 250 seems way too high though. I can also say that I was a mid-tier geek, I had some experience and some chops but there were dudes who had been paid programmers when they started as freshmen, it was at times intimidating. I do personally know a half dozen folks that changed majors because they decided they couldn't hack it before things really got difficult; good smart people. It can be a very intense pressure cooker, say 50% leave SCS, of the 50% that stay, maybe 90% have had a fair amount of experience and then the 10% that don't struggle with tools and just basic things before they can even do the work. Life's not always fair but that environment was definitely self shaping. I have no doubt in my mind that some of the ones that switched majors could have made it and were maybe a bit psyched out. When I heard this, in a way I felt a sense of pride, I had finished the "Real CMU" before it got watered down. I also felt a bit of loss, like I had spent the time and money to get their name on my resume and they were going to water its value down. As I've matured, started a family, etc.. I've grown to believe that CMU had (maybe still has) a fairly unhealthy emotional culture about it, I learned a lot, and I really don't have a lot of bad things to say about the place but I meet a bunch of damaged people there and some that might not be damaged so much as just not healthy emotionally. I'm not a mental health expert though, it's just my feeling, there are also some great people I meet there too. I'm in far more contact with people not of SCS though. I've worked at a number of startups, including a couple that were very much on the brink of death and I don't know that I've ever encountered any professional stress close to some of the times at CMU.
jamesbritt 13y ago
The real test is in how many decide to stick with it. Edit: the comment thread on the site discusses this.
gamegoblin 13y ago
I think that the biggest one is number 2 (giving more emphasis to CS potential rather than CS skill in the admissions process). Somehow we've made a society in which getting into computer programming at a young age is generally not something young girls are taught to want. Consequently, the huge majority of young programmers (below college age) are boys. I started programming when I was 12. The advantage this has given me in the tech world (academia and industry) cannot be overstated. There is a giant gap between people who start programming at a young age due to desire and curiosity and people who learn to for coursework at uni. So while not giving preferential treatment to the boys whom society has not discouraged from programming at a young age (and seems to discourage girls from it) is definitely going to increase the number of girls in the department (which is a good thing), I also think we should really figure out what element of society is making programming an undesirable hobby for young ladies.
- tjr 13y ago
  I started programming when I was about 11. I did it on my own at home, and also at school, where our classroom had an Apple II computer. At school, I was joined by (especially) two others strongly interested in programming, one boy and one girl. Looking back, I could not identify anything whatsoever that would have made our programming activities especially appealing to either boys or girls, nor especially undesirable to either boys or girls. Really, I had the impression that pretty much everyone else -- boys, girls, and teachers -- thought our interest in programming was kind of strange, and being a boy (or a girl) had nothing to do with it. An anecdote, of course, and I have no idea how, or if, it fits into the bigger picture.
  - gamegoblin 13y ago
    It's definitely hard to see. That's part of the problem. But if you look at the number if programmers under age 18, I suspect the gap will be even wider than > 18. Something about society is pushing young women away from it. Some of my suspicions: 1. The internet is generally more hostile to girls. If you stumble into the wrong chat room or forum, you get "show your tits". When I started programming, I got on the internet for help and met some amazing friends who helped me become a better programmer. I absolutely hate when gender topics come up on HN because I generally like this website, but gender topics tend to bring the assholes out of the woodwork. I got a female CS student friend of mine reading HN regularly, but when she ran into one of these sorts of threads she was appalled. And rightfully so. And HN isn't nearly as bad as the internet at large. 2. It's tied to video games being male majority. I played computer video games a lot more than any girls I knew as a kid. This exposure to computers (and config files, etc) set the stage for programming. The video game realm is making a lot of progress in getting girls playing (I think more or consoles than PC, but the general trend is up everywhere), and I've seen this positively influence girls' predispositions towards programming. 3. There is a positive feedback loop in social circles, particularly in formative years (middle school). Kids encourage the status quo. So it's hard for a kid to develop hobbies outside of their clique. I think this relates to the gender problem because girls at that age tend to be even more exclusive than boys (at least in my experience and everyone I've asked). But those are just suspicions and the real problem could be more fundamental.
jzila 13y ago
Prior to now, many of the approaches I'd seen targeted women specifically. The tactics listed in this article instead focus on trying to abstract out what could make a good developer _in the future_. This is elegant to me because it approaches the problem in a bottom up way: "how can we more equitably target candidates so that we don't miss potentially great fits?", instead of top down: "how can we include more of these specific groups in our candidate pool?"
wrthomps 13y ago
I'm a CS major at CMU graduating this year and I think I can help elaborate on the "potential vs. current level" thing a bit. Things have changed somewhat since I entered the school, but the ideas are mostly the same. For my class, there were three intro-level programming courses, each a prereq for the next: introductory programming for those with no experience, introduction to data structures, and fundamentals of algorithm and data structure analysis. A pre-test given over the summer was used to establish which class you were put into. According to the department, roughly one-third of the class ended up in each one. I had no programming experience coming in, so I was put in the first class. The final course of that intro sequence was also the major fundamentals course for one of the three tracks that the curriculum branched out to after the first intro class, focusing on algorithms and their implementations. The other two tracks focused on systems programming and mathematical interaction (via functional programming). Every student, regardless of their intro class, typically completes these tracks by the end of their second year or early into their third year, which opens up basically all of the 300- or 400-level specialization courses in the department. Which is why the school doesn't need to focus on people with lots of experience coming in--the structure of the curriculum means that everyone gets to the same level of important fundamentals pretty quickly, and once you've done that you get to branch out and specialize into whatever you want. The more experienced newcomers just have more time to do that. And anecdotally, the approach has definitely worked. I've got a great job lined up starting this summer that I'm excited to start. I am not a woman so I can't speak to its effectiveness in attracting women specifically, but in my experience the school has done a great job accommodating a wide range of experience levels.
- pilom 13y ago
  As a CMU alumn, I have to add that part of the reason that the CS department has the 3 levels is that most majors at the school require a programming course. I'd guess that your intro course had more non-CS majors in it than the other 2 freshmen courses which tend to have a higher proportion of CS majors.
moultano 13y ago
I had a chance to talk to the undergraduate dean of SCS about #2. Essentially they found that "geekiness" (as he described it) had no correlation with performance in the program, but a huge correlation with gender.
- Zigurd 13y ago
  Experience, if not geekiness, still counts. Lots of boys get into coding in high school, with or without formal training. My daughter, who is in SCS at CMU now, was fortunate to transfer from her high school to Mass Academy, adjacent to the WPI campus, where she took WPI's intro course that's somewhat SICP-based. I believe that helped significantly, compared to other women in SCS who are certainly intelligent and in all other ways capable enough, but were starting without experience, and hence without informed expectations of what they were about to embark upon. [EDIT:] The SCS curriculum is designed to minimize the academic effect of coming in "cold," and all majors, especially ones where outsiders have little notion of what's current have this risk, but there's still a relatively larger potential among women for the shock of not knowing what exactly you signed up for.
- Crito 13y ago
  I've recently been toying with the idea that the "brogrammer" trend is in reality little more than a term used to vilify male programmers who, more than anything else, share the common trait of having rejected "geek/nerd/gamer" culture or fashion. The term is male specific because female enrollment has been suppressed for the past few decades, making males the most prominent members of just about any fashion/culture trend in tech. The term has become synonymous with sexism because many (but by no means all, or even most) "brogrammers" are indeed sexist (as are other programmers). Because "brogrammers" are different, this sexism is recognized for what it is more frequently than sexism from "non-bro programmers" (who, for most programmers, are part of the in-group). If we stop selecting for "geek/nerd/gamer", I think that we might see the evaporation of the concept of "brogrammer" as a particularly problematic gender specific trend. (One of the assumptions that I make is that most people who are labeled as "brogrammers" by others do not self-identify as "brogrammers".)
  - 13y ago
xrctl 13y ago
Um, how CMU:SCS has a gender ratio higher than average is because they accept more women. In 2000 the acceptance rate for women was 39%, for men it was 9% [1]. This is completely boring, MIT could make it so its CS class was 100% women if it wanted to, and because loads of very intelligent people apply to MIT I am sure that class of 100% women would do well. But, this is not a tactic that your average school who struggles to get qualified applicants at all can utilize. [1] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~lblum/PAPERS/women_in_computer_science.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~lblum/PAPERS/women_in_computer_scien...
- cschmidt 13y ago
  I take it from your comment that you infer that it was 39% because they had lower standards for women. Therefore, they are affirmative action babies who shouldn't be there. I think it is more likely that their outreach programs (through CS AP teacher training etc.) that encouraged the best and brightest women to apply were successful, so that the pool of women were significantly more qualified. Also, I wonder what the more recent numbers look, as 2000 was a long time ago.
  - xrctl 13y ago
    > I think it is more likely that their outreach programs (through CS AP teacher training etc.) that encouraged the best and brightest women to apply were successful, so that the pool of women were significantly more qualified. That is entirely implausible. Those straws are miles away, dude. That could perhaps explain a 20% difference, not a 330% difference.
dandrews 13y ago
See also: "How Harvey Mudd College Increased Its Percentage of Women in CS", a ten-minute interview with Harvey Mudd's President, Dr. Maria Klawe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ssh6ZcOorw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ssh6ZcOorw
rayiner 13y ago
It's really wonderful to see schools like CMU lead the charge in this area, and I hope industry gives them the support encourage them to keep pushing forward. Programs like these will always be criticized as being "affirmative action" but I think in the long run, industries are better for them. Industry says we have a shortage of programmers, yet are content to maintain their focus on the sorts of people, overwhelmingly men, who started dabbling with it as teenagers. This is supremely short-sighted. It is in the interest of industry to bring people into the talent pipeline who might not have had the inclination, often for social or economic reasons, to spend their teenage years "hacking" but who demonstrate aptitude and could be excellent programmers if trained.
heezo 13y ago
There were 2 women in my class, my first year at CMU. Really helped me to focus on my studies. Anyway, it's hard to do better. I'm just glad that they are.

36 points by superlucy 13y ago

dengnan 13y ago

No offence. But I would be more interested in how they increased diversity without lowering the bar.

teraflop 13y ago
Maybe you should read the article, then.
cschmidt 13y ago
It sounds like the only thing they did with admissions was to not look at previous programming experience as a major factor. I was admitted to a Chemical Engineering college program, despite the fact that I had no previous high school experience in fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and the rest. No one thought that was strange. Why is CS so different that you have to be a hot-shot programmer before you enter?
- jamesbritt 13y ago
  Where is the hot-shot requirement?
  - cschmidt 13y ago
    > In the past, admissions gave preference to people with lots of previous programming experience.
    - jamesbritt 13y ago
      Right. Lots of exerience doesn't equal "hot shot" though.
- khawkins 13y ago
  CMU is a top tier school. Why should you deny a hot-shot programmer admission for someone who has a passing fancy? Judging "potential" instead of a candidate's past work and experience reeks of affirmative action.
  - cschmidt 13y ago
    You are totally using the candidate's past work and experience to judge them. I'm sure those that get in have outstanding AP tests in math and science, great test scores, etc. A hot-short programmer would have that experience counted as well. The point is that programming is not the only type of experience they looked at. That's the same as it is for most other technical degrees (like my ChE). And there isn't any preference based on gender, so this is nothing like affirmative action. It is just saying that bright technical people can learn programming, and don't need to come in as an expert. Also, computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes [1]. [1] http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Computer_science http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Computer_science
  - gamegoblin 13y ago
    They aren't giving them negative weight, they are just looking forward. I know plenty of guys who went into uni with a bit of java experience (AP CS in highschool or something similar). So yeah, they know your basic control flow and OOP. But when it comes to how they will perform in N years, it means nothing. Any intelligent student without experience could (and did!) surpass the "more experienced" programmers by graduation time. If someone is the next programming wiz of that year, I'm sure they will be viewed as having plenty of potential and get in. If someone has a year or two of bad Java, they aren't viewing that as any better than someone with a good quantitative background. That's not affirmative action, it's foresight. Anecdotes, not data, but I know plenty of people who learned Java, C#, or JS in highschool, some even did internships, yet someone who hadn't coded before 2nd year uni soared past their skill level within a year because he was a generally smart guy with good math and logic skills. So should the people with a bit of experience be assumed to have more potential? No. Should somehow who's been coding their whole life and it's their number 1 hobby be assumed to have more potential? Yes. Not because of their experience, but because of their passion.
  - 13y ago
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  CS, much like art and music, is something that any sufficiently motivated individual will start doing far before they turn 18. (They differ from chemeng in this manner.) Both CMU art and CMU music require a portfolio review or audition. http://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/art-required-portfolio-review http://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/art-required-portf... http://www.music.cmu.edu/pages/audition-portfolio-review http://www.music.cmu.edu/pages/audition-portfolio-review
  - sp332 13y ago
    Art and music are not unusual things to get into. But computer programming is often not presented as an option to anyone, especially women. So plenty of motivated and talented people might not even be introduced to it, or take it seriously.
    - yummyfajitas 13y ago
      Anyone with a Facebook account could have typed "learn to program" into Google rather than poking people in the farm while eating candy (or whatever people do on facebook these days). If a person chose not to take programming seriously, that's on them.
      - scarmig 13y ago
        So, women who get into CMU but disproportionately haven't been exposed to programming are in that situation because they were too busy playing Farmville?
        yummyfajitas 13y ago
        I have no idea what they were doing - the point is that a Facebook account indicates the opportunity to use the internet. There has literally never been more information/tools available to potential programmers than there is today - free online coding schools, tutorials, stackoverflow, wikipedia, anything you want. Not to mention free compilers - when I was a kid, Borland C++ cost money. I mention Facebook somewhat sarcastically because it's a service with no shortage of women. If women can be on Facebook, they can also be on Github if they choose to be. There was never an easier time to learn programming, for free, while sitting at home, without even putting on pants, than today. The secret of the patriarchy: http://bit.ly/w0iWlY http://bit.ly/w0iWlY
Nelson69 13y ago
Not lowering the bar, changing the metrics and possibly even raising the bar. I had some conversations with a couple professors there before I graduated in the mid-1990s, they saw it as a two fold problem. The geek culture makes it hard for anyone not within it regardless of gender, second they saw that MIT, Stanford, and some other top schools had more alumni donations and also tended to have more technology startups and such closely related to the school which also sort of affected the school's income but also affected future placement of current students which has a pretty large impact on getting the best students in the future. The thought at the time was that the geek culture was just bad for the school, period, they produced a lot of talented engineers but maybe not a lot of really successful people in the bigger picture. I don't remember the exact numbers but I want to say something like over 50% of the SCS students switch majors out of SCS or left CMU, maybe even more. I want to say 250 students were pre-SCS and something like 50 graduated, but 250 seems way too high though. I can also say that I was a mid-tier geek, I had some experience and some chops but there were dudes who had been paid programmers when they started as freshmen, it was at times intimidating. I do personally know a half dozen folks that changed majors because they decided they couldn't hack it before things really got difficult; good smart people. It can be a very intense pressure cooker, say 50% leave SCS, of the 50% that stay, maybe 90% have had a fair amount of experience and then the 10% that don't struggle with tools and just basic things before they can even do the work. Life's not always fair but that environment was definitely self shaping. I have no doubt in my mind that some of the ones that switched majors could have made it and were maybe a bit psyched out. When I heard this, in a way I felt a sense of pride, I had finished the "Real CMU" before it got watered down. I also felt a bit of loss, like I had spent the time and money to get their name on my resume and they were going to water its value down. As I've matured, started a family, etc.. I've grown to believe that CMU had (maybe still has) a fairly unhealthy emotional culture about it, I learned a lot, and I really don't have a lot of bad things to say about the place but I meet a bunch of damaged people there and some that might not be damaged so much as just not healthy emotionally. I'm not a mental health expert though, it's just my feeling, there are also some great people I meet there too. I'm in far more contact with people not of SCS though. I've worked at a number of startups, including a couple that were very much on the brink of death and I don't know that I've ever encountered any professional stress close to some of the times at CMU.

jamesbritt 13y ago

The real test is in how many decide to stick with it. Edit: the comment thread on the site discusses this.

gamegoblin 13y ago

I think that the biggest one is number 2 (giving more emphasis to CS potential rather than CS skill in the admissions process). Somehow we've made a society in which getting into computer programming at a young age is generally not something young girls are taught to want. Consequently, the huge majority of young programmers (below college age) are boys. I started programming when I was 12. The advantage this has given me in the tech world (academia and industry) cannot be overstated. There is a giant gap between people who start programming at a young age due to desire and curiosity and people who learn to for coursework at uni. So while not giving preferential treatment to the boys whom society has not discouraged from programming at a young age (and seems to discourage girls from it) is definitely going to increase the number of girls in the department (which is a good thing), I also think we should really figure out what element of society is making programming an undesirable hobby for young ladies.

tjr 13y ago
I started programming when I was about 11. I did it on my own at home, and also at school, where our classroom had an Apple II computer. At school, I was joined by (especially) two others strongly interested in programming, one boy and one girl. Looking back, I could not identify anything whatsoever that would have made our programming activities especially appealing to either boys or girls, nor especially undesirable to either boys or girls. Really, I had the impression that pretty much everyone else -- boys, girls, and teachers -- thought our interest in programming was kind of strange, and being a boy (or a girl) had nothing to do with it. An anecdote, of course, and I have no idea how, or if, it fits into the bigger picture.
- gamegoblin 13y ago
  It's definitely hard to see. That's part of the problem. But if you look at the number if programmers under age 18, I suspect the gap will be even wider than > 18. Something about society is pushing young women away from it. Some of my suspicions: 1. The internet is generally more hostile to girls. If you stumble into the wrong chat room or forum, you get "show your tits". When I started programming, I got on the internet for help and met some amazing friends who helped me become a better programmer. I absolutely hate when gender topics come up on HN because I generally like this website, but gender topics tend to bring the assholes out of the woodwork. I got a female CS student friend of mine reading HN regularly, but when she ran into one of these sorts of threads she was appalled. And rightfully so. And HN isn't nearly as bad as the internet at large. 2. It's tied to video games being male majority. I played computer video games a lot more than any girls I knew as a kid. This exposure to computers (and config files, etc) set the stage for programming. The video game realm is making a lot of progress in getting girls playing (I think more or consoles than PC, but the general trend is up everywhere), and I've seen this positively influence girls' predispositions towards programming. 3. There is a positive feedback loop in social circles, particularly in formative years (middle school). Kids encourage the status quo. So it's hard for a kid to develop hobbies outside of their clique. I think this relates to the gender problem because girls at that age tend to be even more exclusive than boys (at least in my experience and everyone I've asked). But those are just suspicions and the real problem could be more fundamental.

jzila 13y ago

Prior to now, many of the approaches I'd seen targeted women specifically. The tactics listed in this article instead focus on trying to abstract out what could make a good developer _in the future_. This is elegant to me because it approaches the problem in a bottom up way: "how can we more equitably target candidates so that we don't miss potentially great fits?", instead of top down: "how can we include more of these specific groups in our candidate pool?"

wrthomps 13y ago

I'm a CS major at CMU graduating this year and I think I can help elaborate on the "potential vs. current level" thing a bit. Things have changed somewhat since I entered the school, but the ideas are mostly the same. For my class, there were three intro-level programming courses, each a prereq for the next: introductory programming for those with no experience, introduction to data structures, and fundamentals of algorithm and data structure analysis. A pre-test given over the summer was used to establish which class you were put into. According to the department, roughly one-third of the class ended up in each one. I had no programming experience coming in, so I was put in the first class. The final course of that intro sequence was also the major fundamentals course for one of the three tracks that the curriculum branched out to after the first intro class, focusing on algorithms and their implementations. The other two tracks focused on systems programming and mathematical interaction (via functional programming). Every student, regardless of their intro class, typically completes these tracks by the end of their second year or early into their third year, which opens up basically all of the 300- or 400-level specialization courses in the department. Which is why the school doesn't need to focus on people with lots of experience coming in--the structure of the curriculum means that everyone gets to the same level of important fundamentals pretty quickly, and once you've done that you get to branch out and specialize into whatever you want. The more experienced newcomers just have more time to do that. And anecdotally, the approach has definitely worked. I've got a great job lined up starting this summer that I'm excited to start. I am not a woman so I can't speak to its effectiveness in attracting women specifically, but in my experience the school has done a great job accommodating a wide range of experience levels.

pilom 13y ago
As a CMU alumn, I have to add that part of the reason that the CS department has the 3 levels is that most majors at the school require a programming course. I'd guess that your intro course had more non-CS majors in it than the other 2 freshmen courses which tend to have a higher proportion of CS majors.

moultano 13y ago

I had a chance to talk to the undergraduate dean of SCS about #2. Essentially they found that "geekiness" (as he described it) had no correlation with performance in the program, but a huge correlation with gender.

Zigurd 13y ago
Experience, if not geekiness, still counts. Lots of boys get into coding in high school, with or without formal training. My daughter, who is in SCS at CMU now, was fortunate to transfer from her high school to Mass Academy, adjacent to the WPI campus, where she took WPI's intro course that's somewhat SICP-based. I believe that helped significantly, compared to other women in SCS who are certainly intelligent and in all other ways capable enough, but were starting without experience, and hence without informed expectations of what they were about to embark upon. [EDIT:] The SCS curriculum is designed to minimize the academic effect of coming in "cold," and all majors, especially ones where outsiders have little notion of what's current have this risk, but there's still a relatively larger potential among women for the shock of not knowing what exactly you signed up for.
Crito 13y ago
I've recently been toying with the idea that the "brogrammer" trend is in reality little more than a term used to vilify male programmers who, more than anything else, share the common trait of having rejected "geek/nerd/gamer" culture or fashion. The term is male specific because female enrollment has been suppressed for the past few decades, making males the most prominent members of just about any fashion/culture trend in tech. The term has become synonymous with sexism because many (but by no means all, or even most) "brogrammers" are indeed sexist (as are other programmers). Because "brogrammers" are different, this sexism is recognized for what it is more frequently than sexism from "non-bro programmers" (who, for most programmers, are part of the in-group). If we stop selecting for "geek/nerd/gamer", I think that we might see the evaporation of the concept of "brogrammer" as a particularly problematic gender specific trend. (One of the assumptions that I make is that most people who are labeled as "brogrammers" by others do not self-identify as "brogrammers".)
- 13y ago

xrctl 13y ago

Um, how CMU:SCS has a gender ratio higher than average is because they accept more women. In 2000 the acceptance rate for women was 39%, for men it was 9% [1]. This is completely boring, MIT could make it so its CS class was 100% women if it wanted to, and because loads of very intelligent people apply to MIT I am sure that class of 100% women would do well. But, this is not a tactic that your average school who struggles to get qualified applicants at all can utilize. [1] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~lblum/PAPERS/women_in_computer_science.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~lblum/PAPERS/women_in_computer_scien...

cschmidt 13y ago
I take it from your comment that you infer that it was 39% because they had lower standards for women. Therefore, they are affirmative action babies who shouldn't be there. I think it is more likely that their outreach programs (through CS AP teacher training etc.) that encouraged the best and brightest women to apply were successful, so that the pool of women were significantly more qualified. Also, I wonder what the more recent numbers look, as 2000 was a long time ago.
- xrctl 13y ago
  > I think it is more likely that their outreach programs (through CS AP teacher training etc.) that encouraged the best and brightest women to apply were successful, so that the pool of women were significantly more qualified. That is entirely implausible. Those straws are miles away, dude. That could perhaps explain a 20% difference, not a 330% difference.

dandrews 13y ago

See also: "How Harvey Mudd College Increased Its Percentage of Women in CS", a ten-minute interview with Harvey Mudd's President, Dr. Maria Klawe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ssh6ZcOorw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ssh6ZcOorw

rayiner 13y ago

It's really wonderful to see schools like CMU lead the charge in this area, and I hope industry gives them the support encourage them to keep pushing forward. Programs like these will always be criticized as being "affirmative action" but I think in the long run, industries are better for them. Industry says we have a shortage of programmers, yet are content to maintain their focus on the sorts of people, overwhelmingly men, who started dabbling with it as teenagers. This is supremely short-sighted. It is in the interest of industry to bring people into the talent pipeline who might not have had the inclination, often for social or economic reasons, to spend their teenage years "hacking" but who demonstrate aptitude and could be excellent programmers if trained.

heezo 13y ago

There were 2 women in my class, my first year at CMU. Really helped me to focus on my studies. Anyway, it's hard to do better. I'm just glad that they are.