1. Giving female students special benefits and privileges.
1.1. Access to Big Sister program.
1.2. Special female-only clubs.
1.3. Special favour in admissions.
1.4. Special favour in high school.
2. Stopped evaluating new students on ability in computer science (which is based, like anything else, on experience) and started evaluating them on extracurriculars and intangibles.
Does this seem kind of fucked to anyone else? They basically threw merit out the window because they'd rather have diversity than talent. Are math programs going to start admitting people who have no experience or proven ability in math now, because those people do more charity work than math nerds? Are chemistry students going to be chosen for their leadership ability rather than scientific ability?
Incidentally, this scheme will only work at an elite college. Giving preferences in admission (as of 2000, acceptance rates are 39% to 9% for women and men respectively) will tend to result in less qualified students. But if you are a top school, it probably won't matter -- there are more top applicants than slots.
Though even at CMU, watering down the applicants seems to be an issue. Women leave CS at a much higher rate than men.
So all this really does is increase the number of women at CMU. It doesn't increase the number of women in CS, since the women CMU admits might have just gone to Rutgers instead.
I don't think you understand how college admissions work. Students are generally accepted based on their overall academic record. Grades, SAT score, extracurriculars, etc.
Students are not accepted to CS programs because they've written a lot of prior code. I'm sure most incoming chemistry students have not spent time inside a lab outside of their high school chemistry class. College is where you specialize in a particular field so students are accepted based on their overall aptitude and not experience in a specific subject.
... of course I understand how college admissions work. Do you assume that I am a total idiot or something? :)
"the Admissions Office began giving more weight to non-academic factors, looking for applicants with leadership
potential and a commitment to “give back to the community.” These broadened criteria also became important in awarding financial aid."
They changed the weighting to emphasize intangibles such as charity and "leadership potential".
"He felt it was important to get the message out that “no prior programming experience is necessary” to enter the CMU computer science program."
They changed the weighting to de-emphasize experience - which is the #1 correlate to ability.
"I'm sure most incoming chemistry students have not spent time inside a lab outside of their high school chemistry class."
But if there was a student who spent time outside the lab, they would give that student special consideration because of proven ability and interest in the field. It just so happens that the majority of CS students are going to have experience outside the computer lab, because in this world everyone has their own computer. Most people don't have their own chemistry lab.
Experience does correlate strongly with current ability, but it correlates much more weakly with potential ability.
There's no college out there that requires "5 years prior job experience", because the relationship between college and student is very different than between employer and employee. Employers look for current ability. Colleges, on the other hand, look for future ability, the indicators of which are significantly more speculative.
According to my mother (a musician) most music programs tend to require prior experience. The rationale is a stronger version of what forensic said: anyone serious about music would have already invested effort into learning how to play. The same could be easily said about CS.
Every college looks at SATs and GPA, which are nothing more than measures of current ability. SATs measure current ability† in math and language. GPA measures current ability in all the subjects. Oftentimes an applicant can get special consideration by proving their interest in the subject and having some experience - for instance at science fairs. Or you can go talk to the professors of your particular subject and if the professors are impressed by your interest in the field they give special consideration. The best predictor of future interest is past interest. And anyone interested in computer science will have experience with it outside of the classroom.
†I know, theoretically they measure potential - but c'mon we all know that's bullshit. It's so easy to either raise or lower your SAT scores through study and experience.
Half the stuff from my old chemistry kit in the 80's would be illegal to sell to mass consumers now. Even legal home chemistry labs can result in getting one's door kicked down by people with guns and being charged with making drug manufacture or terrorism.
My university used a rather simple bait and switch trick with the degree names and changed the name of power engineering to a more friendly energy and environmental engineering.
It actually worked pretty well. There was a significant increase in female students and they didn't change to another degree later.
1) Meticulous study of male and female CS students' attitudes towards computer science education. "Funded by Sloan, the project consisted of hundreds of interviews with both male and female CS students about their histories with computing, interests, motivations and aspirations, reasons for majoring in CS, and their experiences in the undergraduate program. Conducted over a four-year period, the project was able to track many students throughout their time at Carnegie Mellon. By interviewing students once a semester."
2) Education of new teachers of Advanced Placement (AP) Exam for Computer Science in a teacher summer school and alerting them to the gender gap in computing. This summer school took place in CMU, and since it was addressing gender gap, CMU became some sort of Mecca for those who who care about women's involvement in computing.
3) Revamping of the admissions process. "In addition to demonstrated academic competence, the Admissions Office
began giving more weight to non-academic factors, looking for applicants with leadership potential and a commitment to “give back to the community.” These broadened criteria
also became important in awarding financial aid .. About the same time, Allan Fisher also conveyed to the Admissions Office his goal of a gender-balanced program. He felt it was important to get the message out that “no prior programming experience is necessary” to enter the CMU computer science program. The image of a CS student as someone (usually male) who has played with computers since
early childhood is widespread. This often discourages many otherwise talented students from applying to a computer science program."
4) "A Supportive Community: The Women@SCS Advisory Council: The Women@SCS Advisory Council was created in the fall of 1999 and has since met weekly during the academic year. Membership includes undergraduates representing all four years and graduate students representing the various departments within SCS*".
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>> Admissions Office began giving more weight to non-academic factors, looking for applicants with leadership potential and a commitment to “give back to the community.”
Oh, God! What is the plan? Train students in "leadership" and "networking", leave boring technical stuff to those nerds in India or China?
According to their research, women started out with much less confidence but by the junior year it has started to level out when the classes become more difficult for both genders. See section "Gap Between Perceived and Actual Ability" and "Confidence Gap Narrows"
Also see "Geek Mythology: Lore about Being in CS" specifically "It is important to note that most of the CS students (both male and female) we interviewed feel they do not match the stereotype: their interests are varied (including sports, theater, poetry) and not isolated to computer science. "
This paper expounds more on the view that a student must be absorbed in computers 24/7 and that women's perception is that they must be this way to succeed: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/an... men who are not like that still feel like they can be successful in computer science under "The Non-Hacker Male" from that paper.
Based on this information, I believe the stereotypes are self perpetuating and breaking the feedback loop will help a lot. I ask that you personally help by keeping an open mind.
Discrimination against ubernerds
In addition to demonstrated academic competence, the Admissions Office
began giving more weight to non-academic factors, looking for applicants with leadership
potential and a commitment to give back to the community.
Mentoring Programme
The most extensive single activity of the Women@SCS Advisory Council has been the
Big Sister/Little Sister program, which pairs upper-class and graduate students with firstyear
and sophomore CS majors.
Changing emphasis/delivery of (introductory) courses
Even more, insights provided by the Council are likely to have profound impact on the
curriculum. In her green paper circulated at a meeting with faculty, senior Ting-Chih
Shih clearly pointed out that the current CS undergraduate curriculum serves male
students far better than females. For one, the entry programming courses favor students
with more experience (usually men) who seem to get better scores effortlessly As a
result, many women begin thinking that learning computer science takes innate talent
and no amount of hard work will pay off They start to lose confidence and forget their
initial interest in computer science Moreover, the way lectures are presented seem to
appeal to men more. In general, females feel that the birds-eye view of a problem, and the
end result, are more relevant than the coding details in between
Since when has dithering over details been recognized as a favorable trait in programmers? Also, that response was in the context of intro-level CS courses: so if you're fretting over the implementation details of glorified Hello World applications, instead of focusing on the overarching concepts , I'd be inclined to say you'd better change your ways or you won't be a very good programmer.
1. Not every CS graduate will work as a programmer. Many will work in other technical roles within the industry. Do not assume that CS knowledge is only appliable to programming. I graduated from a CS course and I'm currently a sysadmin, and having a CS degree makes me a better professional;
2. Having little interest in the details is usually just common-speak for lack of technical skill. Having the skill/competence and lacking the interest is seldom found in the same person;
3. It's the introductory classes that lay out the ways in which one faces every programming problem. Not paying attention to detail means allowing bad habits to root themselves. I still remember some of those "details" from my introductory classes to programming 12 years ago, and I frequently other people (otherwise experienced) commiting mistakes that I manage to avoid due to those "details".
Better to have an overall view while learning to program, and a penchant for details when implementing one tiny little part of a 1 million line code base that 100 other people are also working on.
I didn't re-read it, but from what I remember, they started an intensive effort to both retain women who started in computing classes as well as understand the reasons why less women start computing and continue.
They had a smaller usegroup they used for their study and show that women drop out thinking that they're not doing as well as men in the same classes when really, they're doing about above average.
The author says that retention is important but I didn't see anything about either retention or graduation rates. If the "extra" women aren't graduating at a reasonable rate, did admitting them do them any good? Or, is that the wrong question?
Looking at the numbers, we see a change from 89 men and 7 women (96 total) to 83 men and 49 women (132 total) enrolled.
Looking at admission rates shows us how it was done. The women's admission rates were basically unchanged, from 34% to 36%, so the increase in women admitted and enrolled is due almost entirely to the increase in applications by women. At the same time, the overall admission rates dropped from 26% to 12%. Since the population has only two components, men and women, and the rates for women were unchanged means that the admission rates for men dropped significantly.
I wonder what relationship the admissions criteria have to success in the program.
However, the numbers suggest another question. What about the guys who were displaced by women? (There were at least 6 and no men got any of the "expansion" slots.) They get the same benefits that the rest of us get from more women in CMU CS, but they "paid" more than the rest of us. ("But for" the decision to admit women on a different scale, they would have gotten in.) Shouldn't they be compensated?
1. Giving female students special benefits and privileges.
1.1. Access to Big Sister program.
1.2. Special female-only clubs.
1.3. Special favour in admissions.
1.4. Special favour in high school.
2. Stopped evaluating new students on ability in computer science (which is based, like anything else, on experience) and started evaluating them on extracurriculars and intangibles.
Does this seem kind of fucked to anyone else? They basically threw merit out the window because they'd rather have diversity than talent. Are math programs going to start admitting people who have no experience or proven ability in math now, because those people do more charity work than math nerds? Are chemistry students going to be chosen for their leadership ability rather than scientific ability?