So they increased female students by...<p>1. Giving female students special benefits and privileges.<p>1.1. Access to Big Sister program.<p>1.2. Special female-only clubs.<p>1.3. Special favour in admissions.<p>1.4. Special favour in high school.<p>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.<p>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?
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.<p>It actually worked pretty well. There was a significant increase in female students and they didn't change to another degree later.
It's only 6 pages, and clearly says:<p>"<i>The findings of this study have been well documented elsewhere and we will not go into details here.</i>"<p>The paper is a summary and synthesis of an entire project, see some of their publications here:<p><a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/</a><p>Their approach is multi-pronged and involved:<p>1) Meticulous study of male and female CS students' attitudes towards computer science education. <i>"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.</i>"<p>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.<p>3) Revamping of the admissions process. "<i>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."<p>4) "</i>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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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"<p>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. "<p><a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/si.." rel="nofollow">http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/si...</a>.<p>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: <a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/an...but" rel="nofollow">http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/an...</a> men who are not like that still feel like they can be successful in computer science under "The Non-Hacker Male" from that paper.<p>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.
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?<p>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.<p>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.<p>I wonder what relationship the admissions criteria have to success in the program.<p>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?