Losing Ground: Science and Engineering Graduate Education of Black and Hispanic Americans
In 1996 and 1997 a tidal wave of judicial rulings, legislative referenda and editorial opinions opposing affirmative action swept across the landscape of this country. The Adarand and Hopwood decisions, court challenges to minority focused programs and in California, the ruling of the Regents of the University of California and Proposition 209* hit the public consciousness, calling into question thirty years of public policy aimed at bringing racial and ethnic minorities and women into the mainstream of American life. Much of the conflict was waged around issues of so-called preferential treatment of minorities in distributing scarce resourcesãseats in the entering classes of selective programs and/or institutions, and financial support for education.
Documented declines in the enrollment of Black and Hispanic Americans from the entering freshman classes at selective University of California campuses and from law schools and medical schools were front-page news across the nation. In view of the distributed nature of graduate admissions, little was known about the effect of these rulings and referenda on the makeup of the entering classes of prospective scholars and researchers or the faculty of the future.
With support from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and with the cooperation of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS), staff of the AAAS undertook a study of the science and engineering (S&E) graduate school population of a sample of 93 major research universities. These universities were selected because of the size of their research enterprise and graduate student population, including underrepresented minority U.S. citizen and permanent resident graduate students, as well as their documented production of Ph.D.¼s, including Ph.D.¼s awarded to underrepresented minority American students.
Information was requested on the application, admission, and enrollment of U.S. citizens and permanent residents by race and by ethnicity for the years 1994, 1995, 1996, and 1997 as well as on policies related to the award of financial aid to students (as of November 1, 1997).
In 1989, American Indians, Blacks, and Hispanics received 9.8% of all science and engineering bachelor¼s degrees awarded to U.S. citizens and permanent residents. By 1995 these underrepresented minorities received 13.5% of such degrees awarded to U.S. citizens and permanent residents (Hill, 1997). The underrepresented minority share of S&E bachelor¼s degrees has increased as the number of such degrees has grown. There has been a stable trend toward increased bachelor¼s degree production in S&E for underrepresented minorities with increases of over 58.0% for Blacks, 66.5% for Hispanics and 71.7% for American Indians between 1989 and 1995 (Hill, 1997). By contrast, degrees awarded to white, non-Hispanic U.S. citizens and permanent residents have increased by only 10% during the same time period.
While increased enrollment of underrepresented minority American students in graduate education in science and engineering was expected, in light of increased baccalaureate degrees awarded to Black and Hispanic Americans over the previous years, declining enrollments were seen, especially for African Americans. In the study reported herein, a precipitous one-year drop of over 20% was seen in the data collected for all S&E fields and a 19.3% drop in the NSCSM&E (natural sciences, computer sciences, mathematics, and engineering) first-year graduate enrollments of African Americans between 1996 and 1997 (see Figure A). Overall decline observed in first-year S&E and NSCSM&E graduate enrollment did not approach the magnitude of the decline for African American students.
Hispanic American students also showed a decline between 1996 and 1997 for first-year graduate enrollments in S&E and NSCSM&E fields; following an increase between 1995 and 1996, 1997 enrollment returned to approximately 1995 levels for NSCSM&E fields. The decline for Hispanic American entering graduate students was dramatic for all S&E fields, falling 16.2% between 1996 and 1997 after three consecutive years of gains (see Figure B).
Some of the overall decline, as well as the decline for Black and Hispanic Americans, in first-year graduate S&E enrollment was likely related to students¼ choosing to move directly into a thriving workforce where there was strong demand for those with bachelor¼s degrees in S&E fields. But the magnitude of the decline for first-year African American and Hispanic American graduate students between 1996 and 1997 was about twice that seen overall.
Through review of data and research from a variety of sources, the authors considered the following possible explanations for the precipitous drop in first-year S&E enrollments for Black and Hispanic American students from our sample of institutions, including:
- students¼ positive response to a thriving economy and strong job market, especially for persons with technical skills;
- increased level of debt from undergraduate education leading students to be more hesitant to attend graduate school;
- shift in enrollment from graduate to professional school (especially medical school) enrollment;
- reaction of institutions to the uncertainties of federal support for R&D by shrinking the R&D enterprise and reducing the number of admitted graduate students needing support;
- student movement away from graduate enrollment in response to a perception of declining opportunities for faculty employment;
- shift in enrollment from most selective to less selective graduate institutions not in the sample;
- (re)-introduction and use of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) as a screen to increase student selectivity, especially in anticipation of a smaller R&D enterprise;
- reaction of students and/or institutions to the heated debate, court challenges and referenda associated with the use of race and ethnicity as factors in the admission of and provision of financial aid to students.
A number of these explanations were discounted based on the findings. Data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) do not support the notion that Black and Hispanic American students were diverted from graduate programs to medical schools since medical schools also experienced a precipitous decline in first-year matriculation of underrepresented minorities between 1996 and 1997. Universities in our survey also did not experience decreases in federal funding for R&D between the relevant years.
Other possible explanations remain open to research. While it was beyond the scope of this project to query the students who did not apply to or enroll in graduate programs in the surveyed institutions, visits to ten of the universities in the sample revealed a set of contextual issues and common themes that point to the changing climate for affirmative action as a contributing element in the decline of Black and Hispanic American first-year enrollees.
Visits to ten institutions and discussions with administrators, faculty and students lead us to conclude that policy ambivalence wrought by legal challenges (and fear of legal challenges) to programs and financial support targeted to minorities has likely had a chilling effect on the graduate enrollment of underrepresented minority students. The small numbers of such studentsãcoupled with the decentralized nature of the graduate recruitment, application, admission and enrollment processãmeans that erosion of the base of underrepresented minority graduate students likely goes undetected in the institution. The shifting policies related to targeted financial support for minority students reinforce the notion of an unwelcoming environment.
The absence of a supportive environment and the need for minority students to deal with negative incidents are not new. But the shift away from supportive laws and policies sets a new tone. As institutions debate what practices are appropriate and/or legal, underrepresented minority students are continuing to disappear from the pool of entering S&E graduate students. The 21st century science and engineering workforce is being formed now. The prospect that the ethnic and racial composition of that workforce will resemble the diversity of the U.S. population continues to fade.
* For information on these court cases, please refer to footnote number two in the Introduction and footnote number six in the Findings section of this paper.
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| *Natural sciences, computer science, mathematics and engineering. All fields comprise natural sciences, computer science, mathematics, engineering, social sciences, and psychology. |
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| *Natural sciences, computer science, mathematics, and engineering fields. All fields comprise natural sciences, computer science, mathematics, engineering, social sciences, and psychology. |