How Carnegie Mellon Increased the Proportion of Women in Computer Science

http://www.hackingplay.com/carnegie-mellon-study-on-gender-and-computer-science

by junelin • 13 years ago

39 62 13 years ago

hackingplay.com

xutopia• 13 years ago

Awesome work! I wonder if the effect will be long lasting.

jsnk• 13 years ago

HN ddos seems to be at work.

Here is the cached version.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TGYuw9a...

aroch• 13 years ago

     A more inclusive admissions process

Isn't this basically saying "we're admitting more, less qualified females and fewer more qualified (relatively) males". I see this all the time in STEM related admissions and I'm not sure I like it. I'm for encouraging women in STEM and I love that lab culture is much more open and welcoming of women nowadays (of the programs I work with, many of them have >60% women) but there does come a point where we've built a whole new level of institutional discrimination. I know of many well qualified male applicants that were denied to make room for substantially less qualified female applicants all in the name of "equality". It's not equality if you're elevating one gender to artificially make things "equal" on paper.

hga15• 13 years ago

See what I just posted, 29% of the class of 2004 women failed to graduate in the major within 4 years. Continuing my thoughts on the effect of the dot com crash, if the attrition was mostly transfers we'll likely never know the reason(s), especially since the one your positing is impossibly un-PC.

Worse, if you're right, recent women graduates of the program could have the affirmative action stigma. Or the failure rate could reflect a common disconnect between the admissions office and the faculty, except in this case it's all in the department, and a lot of the faculty didn't buy into the program to the extent of lowering standards "too much".

rayiner8• 13 years ago

CMU's overall 4-year graduation rate is only 71% so that sounds like women in the CS program graduated at the same rate as men: http://collegeapps.about.com/od/collegeprofiles/p/Carnegie_M.... CMU, like most engineering schools, has high levels of major attrition: http://hlt.media.mit.edu/dfe_readings/fisher_2002_clubhouse.... (see Figure 2).

rayiner8• 13 years ago

You're presupposing that whatever admissions standard existed before was "neutral" and any deviation from that involves discrimination. But consider the specific changes made:

"In the past, admissions gave preference to people with lots of previous programming experience. The new criteria focused on potential by targeting students who showed science and math aptitude as well as non-academic strengths like leadership. The department made it explicit that no prior experience was required."

None of these measures seem to me to discriminate against men. Also, the enrollment gender ratio of 40-60 isn't that far off from the representation of women and men among high school students who score 750 on the SAT Math (CMU's interquartiles for SAT Math are 690-790), which is roughly 35-65.

MIT's experience evening out its gender ratio is illustrative. Unfortunately I can't find the link right now, but MIT found sometime in the 1990's that women were outperforming their admission predictors, based heavily on SAT scores, relative to men. So they rebalanced their admissions process to put less emphasis on SAT scores and more emphasis on high school GPAs.

Also, "equality" here is a more complex issue than you're making it out to be. Social conventions are self-perpetuating. You can't just remove the overt discrimination and assume things will shift back to a healthy equilibrium. Once you have bent a metal beam outside the elastic region you can't just remove the external force and wait for it to straighten itself out! Illustrative here is the legal industry's experience with fairly aggressive affirmative action for women in the 1970's and 1980's. Law firms went from being 95% men to being almost even, and that new equilibrium was self-perpetuating. The ratio stayed roughly equal even after the measures were phased out.

hga15• 13 years ago

However MIT didn't achieve its current ratio without significantly watering down the core requirements everyone has to pass. This started before the '80s, and it didn't ruin the Institute's reputation, but it had some clear effects.

On the other hand, there is only one MIT, and the intense self-selection that occurs before anyone applies has allowed it to get away with all sorts of stupid admissions tricks going back many decades. E.g. for a long time it didn't have a professional running the office.

yock• 13 years ago

You're presupposing that whatever admissions standard existed before was "neutral" and any deviation from that involves discrimination.

No he isn't. The question is whether or not merit is the ultimate criteria for admissions. If gender is to be elevated above merit, all we've done is exchanged one form of discrimination for another.

We should be constantly scrutinizing how we judge merit and filter out discriminatory practices. The danger is of course that this is very hard, and it's much easier to weight our decisions in favor of those who have been discriminated against rather than strive for getting the judgement correct. To my heart, this is worse than the original inequality.

cortesoft• 13 years ago

I don't think that is what it means. They aren't letting in 'less qualified' women. What they are doing is realizing that their previous admission process was not doing a very good job of selecting the best possible candidates. They were choosing people who had previous programming experience; there are a lot of people who would do very well in programming but just haven't been exposed to it yet. It turns out, a lot of those people who would do well but haven't been exposed yet are women.

Imagine you are trying to select people to join your music school as clarinet students, and you have two candidates. One is slightly better on the clarinet than the other, but the currently better student has played for years while the other has barely started. The one who barely started has much more room to grow, and in many ways it would make sense to pick them for your school.

If you only select the people that already have training in the field your school is teaching, you aren't going to get the best bang for your buck.

auctiontheory3• 13 years ago

Isn't this basically saying "we're admitting more, less qualified females and fewer more qualified (relatively) males".

I used to think exactly like you when I was much younger. And I thought I was one of those "more qualified" guys.

Now I observe that if MIT's goal is to admit students who will use technology to make a positive contribution in society, filling the class with men who are "smart" in exactly one dimension ... is not the best way to achieve that goal.

To put it another way, if you want to maximize future impact, trading in 100 Math SAT points for 100 EQ points is an excellent deal.

And don't even start on "equality." If you're even thinking about MIT, you've had a hugely unequal leg up in the global birth sweepstakes.

tzs2• 13 years ago

Isn't this basically saying "we're admitting more, less qualified females and fewer more qualified (relatively) males"

Not necessarily. What they mean by "more inclusive process" is:

   In the past, admissions gave preference to
   people with lots of previous programming
   experience. The new criteria focused on
   potential by targeting students who showed
   science and math aptitude as well as non-academic
   strengths like leadership. The department made
   it explicit that no prior experience was required.

It sounds to me more like they fixed a flaw in their prior process. Remember, we are talking about Carnegie Mellon, one of the best computer science schools in the world, not some random trade school. As Dijkstra correctly quipped:

   Computer science is as much about computers
   as astronomy is about telescopes

Yes, programming experience can be useful in some areas of computer science, and even if your interests lie in those parts of CS that do not involve programming at all your undergraduate degree will surely require some courses in those areas where it is useful, and so knowing some programming is useful to all computer scientists at some point.

However, as HN often points out (often as part of telling someone they don't need to go to college), you can become a good programmer and developer on your own with no formal instruction. The same applies to people in college--anyone with the aptitude to get into Carnegie Mellon should be able to easily pick up any programming they need in CS on the side.

Having programming experience be a significant factor for admission to a computer science program makes about as much sense as having welding experience be a significant factor for admission to a mechanical engineering program, or mental arithmetic proficiency for admission to a math program.

cschmidt• 13 years ago

Good point. I was admitted to the University of Michigan in engineering, where I majored in chemical engineering, despite having never done any chemical engineering in my life. That applies to most engineering. How many students in mechanical, aerospace, etc. had done any of it in high school?

Why would CS be different? (Now, of course, I program extensively. I picked that up on my own.)

abalone2• 13 years ago

You either didn't read past that subheading or are just trolling.

They clearly state that by "inclusive" they mean they more purely select for "science and math aptitude" and "strengths like leadership." Whereas previously they were also factoring in prior programming experience (at the high school level).

Prior experience is going to reflect gender discrimination and peer pressures that girls experience in their teens. They are more precisely selecting for high-aptitude candidates with strong potential.

A very rough analogy would be selecting candidates for a kid's golf school. If you include "prior golfing experience", you're going to bias towards the rich white kids while excluding a ton of very qualified kids with great athletic potential. By excluding prior experience, you're more purely selecting the best qualified candidates for a golf school.

You might have a point if the goal was to start coding (golfing) immediately on day one, like in a professional job. But it's a school. They should select for future potential.

altero• 13 years ago

All we (men) can ask for is equality in programs dominated by females. What this university did to increase proportion of men in Gender Studies?

lliamander3• 13 years ago

I prefer to avoid uncharitable interpretations, so I am hesitant to jump to such a conclusion. However, I will admit that judging admission based upon "non-academic strengths like leadership" allows personal biases and political forces to seep into the admissions process. Are admissions counselors, or computer science professors, really qualified to judge qualities like "leadership"? The potential for the kind of political corruption that you inferred does make me concerned.

Now, I have read Dr. Harper's explanation of the change to the CS coursework, particularly with regard to the introductory classes. Apparently, when you introduce students to programming as an extension of algebra (i.e. functional programming) then you build upon timeless mathematical intuitions and reasoning abilities as opposed to mastery of the ephemeral and accidental complexities of C, Java, or Python. Not only does this seem to lead to a greater proportion of women participating in computer science, it leads to a greater overall retention. You can read more about it here (https://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/intro-curri...).

hga15• 13 years ago

WOW. I'm really impressed. And that's totally, 100% entirely different that MIT's approach to things. In, of course, directions I approve of.

Then again this is the work of a CS department with roots in math, business, and e.g. AI, and MIT's roots are in its pioneering EE department, it's resolutely EECS, and the last time I checked, the vast majority of undergraduates get EECS degrees, vs. ones that are mostly one or the other.

mathattack• 13 years ago

As they worded it, I don't think so. They included potential and leadership, in addition to experience. There's a judgment call on if that's less qualified or more. If they said, "We'll weight GPA and test scores less for women" then it's lowering standards. They also don't say if the class size is growing or shrinking. At most schools it's growing dramatically, and probably was the case in the 90s when the study was done. It probably was not the case in the dot-com bust.

My impression is that CMU, MIT and other top schools can increase the gender balance without sacrificing quality. The national challenge is can everyone else?

hga15• 13 years ago

I wish the author would "do the math": of the 42% female freshman class of 2004 entering in 2000 (which at CMU for this major requires a direct application for one of 135 (last time I checked) seats), 29% failed to graduate in the major within 4 years.

Now, that might be partly an artifact of the dot com crash convincing a subset to transfer to another major, but it otherwise looks very bad; if that happened at MIT for any reason other than transferring out (which I can check on if desired, the department did lose more than half its enrollment during this period as measured by freshman declaring a major), there would be serious hell to pay.

eevee3• 13 years ago

Or a lot of men transferred/changed majors into CS, whereas very few women did—which wouldn't be too surprising since the outreach was aimed at freshmen.

Definitely an oversight in the article either way.

hga15• 13 years ago

I get the strong impression from many sources that transferring into that department is very hard, just like it has its own admissions process (unique among the top 4 CS schools (Stanford, UC Berkeley, CMU and MIT)).

prodigal_erik• 13 years ago

If they're washing out, that's a terrible waste of the faculty's effort and limited seats. But if they're merely taking a fifth year to graduate, well, between unavailable prerequisite courses and part-time jobs, that was getting common at my state school long ago, and it wouldn't worry me much.

hga15• 13 years ago

It had better not be unavailable prerequisite courses, especially since there's no excuse during that period for insufficient lab hardware resources (not true in the bad old days before most everyone can afford a laptop more powerful than a Cray 1). That's one of the reasons for paying the big bucks to go to a private school, and why many state schools are not so much the bargains that appear to be if you can't graduate within 4 or even 5 years.

I can't speak about CMU, but I know there are basically no limits to what MIT will do to make sure every major can graduate in 4 years, and almost always take the courses they need when they want to take them. That has sometimes meant non-majors couldn't take courses intended for majors, but otherwise....

nck42222• 13 years ago

You'd have to compare this to the graduating percentage of all the freshman entering in 2000 for this major, to see if the female portion was outperformed. The female percentage alone doesn't support your conclusion.

auctiontheory3• 13 years ago

29% failed to graduate in the major within 4 years. ... it otherwise looks very bad

Sir, you must not have been paying attention in math, I mean statistics, class. I believe that your experiment needs a control.

Zigurd• 13 years ago

High school girls don't usually have experience in software development. That's not something you can wish away by declaring "no experience required." Coding faster gives you time to finish your problem sets.

Women outperform and outnumber men in universities in other majors. There is no reason to think CMU SCS is drawing from a different gene pool. The solution is to push practical software development experience into high schools and get high school girls involved in hackerspaces and other extra-curricular exposure.

hga15• 13 years ago

"There is no reason to think CMU SCS is drawing from a different gene pool."

Unless of course you wonder or suspect there are relevant genetic differences between the sexes. Not a field I study, but I've read e.g. that there are really significant differences in the populations in situational awareness and 3D visualization (which are focused on because they're life and death critical to fighter pilots, and e.g. the Navy where it's particularly critical all the time has killed people by playing PC games with unqualified female pilots).

I have a perhaps subjective metric I call "the spark". It's pretty rare in general, in (would be/claim to be) programmers, and extra rare in women, I think I've come across 4 in my lifetime.

One thing we should admit to ourselves is that we don't yet really know what we're doing, I liken it to the pre-phonetic alphabet era of reading and writing (which the Chinese never exited???). E.g. compare MIT and CMU's current curricula, they have diametrically opposed foundations and philosophies which of course play out in the courses (e.g. MIT's death to functional programming vs. CMU embracing it, working with libraries you don't understand vs. knowing the foundations, gadgets vs. I assume pure software, etc.).

circuiter• 13 years ago

Does anyone know what are the 'serious consequences' we face if there aren't as many women studying computer science as men?

The male-domination unfortunately persisted since 2000 but the industry has still grown leaps and bounds beyond anyone's imagination. So what seems to be the problem?

alukima• 13 years ago

People work better in diverse groups. Just because the industry has grown doesn't mean it couldn't have grown more.

nck42222• 13 years ago

The industry has grown, that doesn't mean it can't be improved.

I'm not sure where the term "serious consequences" came from, but I think it's pretty straight forward that a group comprised of similar individuals will come up with similar ideas. More women, means more diversity, which means differing ideas, which means more innovation.

Silicon Valley is already referred to as echo chamber.

NegativeK• 13 years ago

IT exhibits behaviors that are hostile to (approximately, or at least) 51% of potential employees. Talk about excluding talent and insight.

eevee3• 13 years ago

If women are severely underrepresented in our field, then we're doing something that they find exclusionary. Does the work we produce have a similar problem? How would you know?

saraid216• 13 years ago

If you honestly think it's "unfortunate", then isn't that enough of a problem?

rayiner8• 13 years ago

See: http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff (read all the way through).

auctiontheory3• 13 years ago

So what seems to be the problem?

Many of the best technical minds from the top schools are going to Wall Street and to companies that help you share cat videos with your friends.

Some people think that's a problem (for society). You may or may not.

newobj• 13 years ago

When I went to CMU, there were allegedly more "Dave"s than women in SCS.

saucetenuto• 13 years ago

That was only in one particular year IIRC.

galapago• 13 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_discrimination

Prophasi• 13 years ago

The question that arises for me is how the changes affected the performance of the department, however that's measured (e.g. entrepreneurs, investment, placement, grants, average graduate salaries, etc.).

The outcome, good or bad, wouldn't necessarily reflect on the changed proportion of women; it might just as well indicate something about the particular measures they took to achieve it. For instance, they shifted focus more to potential than to prior experience; were their markers for potential the right ones? Were leadership, math, and science emphases balanced properly?

Getting more women into the program is a great start, but do they go on to be successful? Is leading with gender the right way to do it?

How Carnegie Mellon Increased the Proportion of Women in Computer Science

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