In last five years, little progress in increasing the fraction of American CS BS degree recipients who are African Americans

Keith Bowman published a series of blog posts this summer on African American undergraduate degrees in engineering.  In July, he wrote one on computer science – linked here. It’s interesting, careful, and depressing. I’m quoting the conclusion below, but I highly recommend clicking on the link and seeing the whole report. What’s most interesting is the greater context — Bowman is comparing across different engineering programs, so he has a strong and data-driven sense of what’s average and what’s below average.

There has been little progress in increasing the fraction of American CS BS degree recipients who are African Americans. Progress will likely only take place through a concerted effort by industry, professional societies, academia and government to foster change, including stronger efforts in graduate degrees. CS undergraduate programs fare poorly compared to many other engineering disciplines in the context of gender diversity and slightly worse than engineering overall in the fraction of African Americans earning undergraduate degrees. Many of the largest CS programs in the US are strikingly behind the national averages for CS BS degrees earned by African Americans.