John, the actual guy who runs Discriminations, pointed to an article about Auburn University's very successful program for recruiting women and minorities into the Computer Science field.
AUBURN - Auburn University is the unlikely home of the nation's highest concentration of black computer science faculty and graduate students in the country.Additionally, it has a greater concentration of women in its graduate computer science program than just about anywhere else.
That's not just trivia, according to Juan Gilbert, one of those black faculty members and the director of the Human-Centered Computing Lab. The ability to recruit women and minorities into the field of computer science and engineering may turn out to be key to keeping the nation's technological edge, he said.
The National Science Foundation has taken notice. The foundation has approved a four-year, $1 million grant to study Auburn's success at bringing women and minorities into the field and design a way to duplicate it at other universities.
John's snide comments make it apparent he doesn't like the idea of this program.
First let's look at the reasoning behind the creation of the program.
Why is it important? In the late 1990s and through 2004, foreign-born students - predominantly from India and China - made up more than half the graduate students studying computer science and computer engineering in the United States. Those students and the professors they work with are primary generators of new inventions and technological breakthroughs.But many of those potential students are now staying home.
Increased scrutiny of student visas after the Sept. 11 attacks has made it harder to get here. The universities in India and China are better established now, making it possible to get a computer science education without coming to America.
And American computer companies are shipping programming work overseas, meaning foreign engineers don't have to come to the United States to get good jobs. At Auburn, applications from foreign students have fallen by about half.
"It's become more lucrative for them to stay at home," Gilbert said.
The response from most universities has been to intensify recruiting in foreign countries, but Gilbert said he believes tapping the resources of this country is a better strategy.
This is serious. Our technological advantage is at stake," Gilbert said. "If international enrollments continue to drop, who will be our engineers? White males can't fill the gaps. Women and minorities are the solution."
Come on, doesn't that make sense? Recruit here, in the USofA? Recruit sucessfully, in fact.
According to the National Science Foundation, between 1991 and 2000, the nation's universities produced about 9,000 computer science graduates and only about 100 of them were black. Now, only about 150 blacks are enrolled in computer science doctoral programs nationwide.Less than 1 percent of the nation's computer science faculty is black, about 32 professors. "And I think I know all of them," Gilbert said.
Auburn now has eight black computer science doctoral students. "We have 5 percent of the country's Ph.D. students in one place," Gilbert said. Nationwide over the past five years, 57 blacks got doctorates in computer science. Five of them, almost 9 percent of the national total, graduated from Auburn.
Women are similarly underrepresented. Though they account for more than 50 percent of the population, women make up less than 20 percent of computer science graduates and 14 percent of faculty. At Auburn, 43 percent of the computer science Ph.D. candidates are women.
There is no way this program is anything but good news.
Now, let's see John's take on it:
The most intriguing question about Auburn's computer science "diversity," I think, is, what difference does it make? According to Juan Gilbert, one of Auburn's black computer science professors, it makes a big difference.
Gilbert said he believes creating a more diverse pool of computer science research won't just keep enrollment up or advance some societal goal. It ultimately will yield better technology."If all of our technology is created by the same people, then our solutions will be limited and they will only serve those people. Diversity is the key," Gilbert said. "Diverse backgrounds yield diverse minds, which yield diverse solutions."
This is a provocative assertion, and it would be good to have some evidence of the results of this "difference." In what sense, or in what sense related to computer science, are all non-blacks "the same people"? "Same" how? How are black minds different from white or Asian or Hispanic minds? Have there been any black "solutions" that could only have been produced by someone with a black background?Discriminating minds want to know....
There is no conception of "all non-blacks" being "the same people," anywhere in the article.
At least it was a rather genteel expression of the hallucination.
You know, I generate a lot of text because I like to give enough context to get a real idea of the article's point of view. Fact is, one can give the central idea of a story or editorial in three, four sentences, tops.
IF you choose the right sentences.
Then again, depending on what you see as being right, one can can totally misrepresent the situation. In three, four sentences, tops.
Posted by P6 at May 14, 2004 08:04 AM
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Or even quicker than that, if they put some effort into it. ;-)
Posted by George at May 14, 2004 02:11 PMAs skeptical as I am about programs that are expressly designed to promote "diversity," I have to agree with you about the article you cite. It does seem like wonderful news, for two reasons.
First, if it's true (and I have no reason to believe that it isn't) that the labor pool for computer scientists is primarily comprised of a particular subset of race/gender groups, and that subset isn't numerous enough to meet the labor demand for computer scientists, it seems to make sense to look for candidates outside that subset. For example, if the CompSci labor force is 20k X of 100k total X, 5k Y of 50k total Y, and 1k Z of 30k total Z, with a demand for 40k CompSci engineers, and it's not likely that many more X's will be interested in CompSci, then the remaining 20k CompSci engineers has to come from the Y's and Z's, or off-shore. I completely agree with you that the more folks we can employ here, the better, so this is great news, regardless of race/gender. In fact, this looks more like a demographics issue than a "diversity" issue.
Second, and this is most important, there is no hint anywhere in the article that the increase in black and female students is because the standards were lowered to let them in. On the contrary, it struck me while reading the article that smart black and female students were viewed more as an untapped resource, inherently a complement, and not desired solely for their race or gender. That's truly wonderful!
It seems to me that if you tell a young black kid that you want him to come to your school to "increase diversity," you're insulting every talent he has and every bit of hard work he's done, implying that all they expect him to contribute is to hang around and "be black around the folks who don't get to see a lot of black people." That strikes me as awful, and horribly underestimates the vast majority of blacks, who are highly capable and talented. But there was no hint whatsoever that the school was all that interested in the students' race, per se, only that they were happy to see a segment of the population that traditionally wasn't too interested in computers coming on board. Isn't that fantastic progress?
I do have to disagree with you on one point. You take John to task for his comments about the final Gilbert quote, regarding all non-blacks being "the same people." Maybe I'm missing some history between you two, but his remarks don't strike me as all that bad. It seems to me that the implication in the quote by Mr. Gilbert is pretty clear. In other words, before this increase in black and female participation, all of our technology was created by "the same people," that is, non-black and non-female people. Now, the quote may be taken out of the context in which Mr. Gilbert said it, in which case it isn't Mr. Gilbert saying that non-black and non-female people are all the same, it's the reporter putting his spin on it that gives rise to the implication.
Moreover, I think the point John is trying to make is that, assuming the implication: a) it is silly to say that all non-black engineers are the same people, for "diversity" purposes; there is a lot of variation among non-black engineers, and alluding that their non-blackness amounts to such a unifying characteristic that it nullifies any benefit arising from the actual diversity of their backgrounds, is pretty clearly irrational; and
b) computer science, like lots of hard sciences, is mostly grounded in harsh reality; facts are facts and either your program works, or it doesn't; to take a painfully simple math example, 2+2=4, it doesn't matter what color the person doing the arithmatic is, the answer is always, for all people, 4. And I think it's a mistake to even allow for differences in color in the hard sciences; once you have a "black" answer to 2+2 and a "non-black" answer, where there is only one true answer, the system is rigged to make one group always wrong, and always at a disadvantage.
I'm sorry this went on so long! I suppose I could have just said, "nice work!, but don't be so grumpy with John!"
Best Regards
Posted by LPC at May 18, 2004 06:21 PMI have no history with him. I've just read for a while after finding a site named Discriminations, at discriminations.us, decorated with a graphic that has the little backwards R in the pivotal dot.
And that clown in the comment sof the other post I linked to, who thinks the way to help Black folks is to force himself on us and make us pay for the privilege of his presence...
You see the spin he gave the story. And I'm seriously of the Malcolm X school when it comes to getting along with folks who don't like me. I'm being nice in his forum because it's his not mine, and because I have fact on my side.
That said, I doubt adding to any thread other than that in which I comment now. Here, since I have nothing to add to what I've already written, I won't specifically dispute your view. And you get an official "cool with me" button.
I don't get it. That guy at discriminations took issue with a very specific statement: namely, that having more black software engineers will make software better. He doesn't understand why. Frankly, neither do I. I can't see how the color of a programmer will affect the quality of the program one way or the other.
Why haven't you addressed his actual question?
Posted by Spoons at May 20, 2004 08:48 AMSpoons:
"If all of our technology is created by the same people, then our solutions will be limited and they will only serve those people. Diversity is the key," Gilbert said. "Diverse backgrounds yield diverse minds, which yield diverse solutions."
People in different conditions will have different outlooks and requirements and different approaches. This increases competition, which as we all know is the only method to insure increasing quality and decreasing price.
Is that sufficiently in keeping with your world view?
Spoons:
I can flip off crap as easily as the next guy.
I addressed seriously what I took seriously.
Posted by P6 at May 20, 2004 09:19 AM