Losing Ground
Proportional declines mar engineering education picture for underrepresented minorities.

BY RONALD ROACH

After more than a decade of steady enrollments and degree completion rates by underrepresented minorities, public schools, colleges, advocacy groups and government agencies still face a daunting task in helping bring Blacks, Latinos and American Indians into the engineering profession in numbers reflecting their growing ranks in the American population. 
"The minority fraction of the (American) student population is growing, so absolute growth in numbers of enrollees and graduates represent a smaller fraction of the total. For example, 2003 baccalaureate degrees rose almost 10 percent (from the previous year) in engineering, but African American, Latino, American Indian and women experienced fractional declines. Only Asians and foreign nationals grew in percentage terms," says Dr. Darryl Chubin, the senior vice president for policy and research at the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering Inc. (NACME).
In a 2003 report titled, "Walking the Talk in Retention-to-Graduation: Institutional Production of Minority Engineers — A NACME Analysis," Chubin and co-author Eleanor Babco, executive director of the Washington-based Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology (CPST), document the engineering education lag by underrepresented minorities and women. Among enrolling students, the "absolute numbers have been increasing for both women and underrepresented minority engineering freshmen," yet "the numbers for men and non-minority freshmen have been increasing at a faster pace," according to Chubin and Babco.
"In 1995, women represented 19.9 percent of the freshman class; in 2001, they represented 18.3 percent. In 1995, underrepresented minorities constituted 17.4 percent of the freshman engineering class; in 2001, they represented 15.8 percent," the report says.
The picture for underrepresented minorities has both educators and policy-makers worried over whether engineering schools can attract and retain Black, Latino and American Indian students at a rate consistent with their growth in the larger student population. The coming demographic shift that's expected to make the United States a non-White majority nation around the year 2050 has made engineering and science education a high priority among policy-makers, scholars and educators. Experts say the long-term prospects for a competitive national economy depend on boosting the participation of underrepresented students in the sciences and engineering.
Complicating the task is the difficulty of attracting Americans into science and technology. Chubin says that despite American society's growing reliance on scientific expertise and technology, the percentage of college-bound high-school graduates pursuing engineering careers has consistently ranged around 9 percent over the past 30 years. He adds that just 6 percent of college-bound high-school students have pursued science degrees.
"You'd expect more (American-born) students in those areas given society's increasing dependency on scientific and technological expertise. But you don't see any growth," Chubin says, offering that Americans typically don't regard engineering and science as highly attractive career avenues.