Women with an UG Engineering Degree in 2001: 19.1% -- In 2013: 19.1%

College Majors Engineering Majors
101

@jjwinkle What difference does it make if the difference are smaller? The obvious point is that if you are only enrolling 20% women to your program, and those women repeatedly, on average, year over year, have better GPA, Grad rate etc. numbers than the men - and then some years you enroll LESS women, you are intentionally hurting the academic quality of your program. How can engineering schools not have better metrics for admission that they can’t admit male students able to perform as well as women. That seems shocking to me.

And then posters have the gall to say that schools must “put a thumb on the scale” to admit more women, we have to say, “but wait, you’re engineers, don’t you look at, you know, that actual statistic?” Women perform BETTER than men. It’s not that there needs to be a “thumb on the scale” it is that your admission metrics are bad. UCSD and others need to fix the admission standards. That is not a “thumb on the scale” that is “doing your job.”

Same with yield/SIR. Yield is not controlled by 209. Yield is based on the schools ability to then enroll the applicants they have already deemed worthy.

@ucbalumnus will have us believe that it is due to more need based financial aid from MIT or more need/merit aid from Stanford. But it would be interesting to see the numbers.

Where are the UCs losing these women to? And why? Why can’t they compete - they have fin aid to give as well, by the way. They can use it how they see fit.

And then you look at the change in the behavior of the UC engineering schools, from hiring to admission to enrollment and it becomes quite clear that they hide behind 209 but actually are either uninterested or incapable of fulfilling a goal that they repeatedly claim they wish to fulfill.

So then you can only conclude that the Dean Sastry’s and President Napolitanos are either inept or dishonest. They keep saying (and Dean Sastary has since 2011) they a “committed” to increase retention. Yet the yield of female applicants is much lower than for men. And it is a lower raw number, so it’s not even like it would take convincing that many to move the needle. So they either are not really interested or inept. In either case, they should be drop-kicked.

Will the change of dean at UCLA Samueli make a difference? That remains to be seen.

At least they seem to be dealing with the most offensive ineptitude and abuses at UCB Law School and Davis. But it does make one wonder about the UC hiring practices in general.

102

@CaliDad2020 where is your daughter attending?

103

“Women perform BETTER than men.” Some do , some don’t. The highest performing women in high school will have plenty of opportunities. It might not mean that every accomplished woman in California will get into UCB or UCLA or UCSD engineering , but they can land somewhere and get a good education. Same with men. There are just not enough slots and too many very good students that want them. As many have already pointed out in this and other threads. Hope your daughter loves the school she has chosen. Good luck to her in engineering.

104

“Where are the UC’s losing these women to? And why? Why can’t they compete-they have fin aid to give as well, by the way. They can use it how they see fit.”

The UC’s are PUBLIC. Are you suggesting they give money to women in engineering. simply because they are women, regardless of need? Good luck with that.

105

You can use the schools’ net price calculators to find out for yourself. For a family of 3 in California with married parents and 1 in college with parent income of $70,000, the net prices are:

Stanford: $5,900 ($900 from parents, $5,000 from student)
MIT: $13,146 ($7,646 from parents, $5,500 from student)
Berkeley: $16,490 ($8,540 from parents, $7,950 from student)

106

@sevmom I’m confused. Are you unaware that the UCs already give merit aid in some circumstances? They give someone aid regardless of need. Why would it not make sense for some of that merit aid to go to a top female candidate that UCB might lose to MIT or Mudd?

You are still not addressing my point. UCB has said, repeatedly and over many years, that they are committed to increased diversity in the engineering school. The L&S school has no problem with gender diversity (although it does with URM representation.) But the COE has an intractable and persistent problem with low female enrollment levels.

The COE does get less female applicants, but of the women it admits - who therefore, BY DEFINITION are “UCB” quality, they have a much lower SIR rate than the do for the males they admit.

At that point it is not a question of admission. These female students are admitted. It is a question of why UCB, supposedly a top 5 or at least top 10 undergraduate engineering school, with an in-state tuition of 1/3 or less than most OOS state schools or privates these girls might get into, can’t get more of these women to enroll.

It is not a 209 question at that point, it is a “UCB is less attractive to me than _____ because…” I wonder what it is that makes UCB less attractive - and I don’t think it is always, or even usually money. I think it is something in the culture of UCB and UCLA (and the other UCs.) And given that Dean Sastry, among others, have vowed to change that low SIR rate, should he be held to his promise?

That is the question. And merit aid money most certainly can be a part of that equation. Why wouldn’t it be?

107

Most students come from families who are not paying anything close to list price tuition, at either UCs (in state) or at the likes of Stanford, MIT, etc… So when the likes of Stanford, MIT, etc. admit female applicants with a little bit of thumb on the scale, female admits are more likely to have competing offers with lower net prices than UCs from schools like those than male admits do.

Yes, there is merit at UCs, but not that much. In the example listed in #104, if the Berkeley student got a Regents’ scholarship, s/he would have a net price of $8,540, lower than MIT, but still higher than Stanford.

108

@ucbalumnus So, without even taking plane tickets to Boston into account, it would take only a 3k merit grant to make the MIT tuition equal for a woman applicant with the stats to get into both schools. For a female applicant with the stats to both be admitted to UCB and MIT. Seems a very small price for a university serious about retaining top talent to pay.

And, of course, Stanford and MIT are among the most generous with need based aid. And for any family making much more than those numbers - or with any kind of home equity or investment income, the private’s need based aid starts dropping. And when the MIT or Stanford, or Princeton’s “actual pay” tuition gets above 14k, which can happen pretty quickly when your sticker price tuition is 45k +, UCB or UCLA is clearly a financially more attractive choice for a CA student. So, how many of those six-figure family women does UCB or UCLA lose to more expensive privates - and why?

That is the question. Why can’t UCB, UCLA, UCSD and UCSB improve its SIR/yield rate to equal that of it male admits? The raw numbers it needs to convince are relatively small. What is wrong with their programs or their outreach that they do such a poor job?

109

@sevmom you do realize the irony of your post given that Chancellors and Regents have both been offered to OOS and international students… Guess we need more of those so we have to offer them money to come take a Cali kid’s seat.

110

@ucbalumnus so, we’re in agreement, if all the women admits that are not SIRing to UCB are going to Stanford for less money instead, Dean Sastry should keep his job and I will write him an apology in my own elegant hand. If, however, they are flying off to Princeton, MIT, Cornell for more money…

What say you then, my friend?

111

Are you suggesting that they give “women in engineering” scholarships? If so, that pesky Proposition 209 comes up again. If you are suggesting more scholarships or financial aid without regard to gender (to avoid that pesky Proposition 209), then that becomes a budget problem. Indeed, few schools are able to compete against those private schools with very large endowments and a ready supply of students from wealthy families willing to pay list price, regardless of other admissions or scholarships.

The huge endowments also mean that schools like Stanford and MIT can afford to have enough unused (“wasted”) capacity in any major, so that students can change majors freely – no need to apply to the major for frosh entry, no need to apply to change major, no need to go through a “weeding” process to get into a major, like is common at many popular public universities for engineering. That is an advantage to the student that is hard to replicate at a budget-limited public universities (UC or otherwise), so some students may choose those well endowed private schools even if they are more expensive.

112

Merit aid, “women in engineering” scholarships, specifically geared for women in engineering would indeed seem like it could bump up against all the Prop 209 stuff. But I’m not from California so don’t know the ins and outs of it. Most public schools have OOS and International students. The California schools are not unique in that, despite your concerns that these OOS students are taking away seats from California kids. UVa has been about 30% OOS for decades.

113

@ucbalumnus I am suggesting that if there are strong candidates who have the choice between MIT and UCB, they might be worthy of a Chancellors or Regent’s scholarship that would give MIT no advantage in the example you gave.

But you are missing a bigger issue. MIT’s (and Princeton’s and Yale’s and Harvard’s and Penn’s and Cornell’s) aid is 100% gender blind as well. The example you gave for the hypothetical girl is the same for any boy with the same income issue. Yet the fact remains: women SIR at a lower rate than men to UCB COE and UCLA Samueli. So your subtly pejorative “thumb on the scale” is pure BS.

(And CMU has about the same endowment - not even counting the UC wide endowment - and yet CMU can attract a higher % of female students. Hm?)

Girls get EXACTLY THE SAME package as a male in the same situation. So the question remains, why do Berkley and UCLA fail to attract top female engineering candidates at the same rate it attracts male engineering candidates?

Is it the faculty diversity issues mentioned here? http://www.dailycal.org/2015/07/12/uc-berkeleys-persistent-lack-of-faculty-diversity-prompts-efforts-to-address-issue/

Is it that women perceive an unfriendly institutional culture personified by men like Dean Choudry and Geoff Marcy

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/inside_higher_ed/2015/10/berkeley_s_star_astronomer_resigns_after_sexual_harassment_investigation.html

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/11/us/california-berkeley-law-school-dean-choudhry-resigns/

Or is it Dean Choudry and UCB COE are inept? Or is it that they really just don’t care?

114

@sevmom so you don’t actually know what you are posting about? So you’re arguing against me on a topic you don’t know about? And you are doing that because, why? You’re naturally contrary?

115

Maybe it is the climate at UCB (although that does not seem to affect the L&S gender diversity.)

http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/UC-Berkeley-s-sexist-response-to-sexual-7230337.php

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/26/uc-berkeley-sexual-harassment-tyan-sorrell-sujit-choudry

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Two-to-File-Sex-Harassment-Claims-Against-Asian-Studies-Professor-at-UC-Berkeley-375243581.html

http://abc7news.com/sports/uc-berkeleys-image-in-question-after-several-sexual-harassment-allegations-surface/1280025/

UCLA seems to have similar issues:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/05/ucla-students-and-faculty-protest-return-professor-accused-sexual-assault-and

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ucla-complaint-20150616-story.html

It is an interesting problem. I would love to know what Dean Sastry and Dean Murthy say about it.

I wonder why they are so much more successful enrolling admitted males than admitted females.

116

You are yet again trying to bring a thread around to your agenda. This thread was not started by you and is not just about California and the plight of women in engineering at UCB, UCLA, and UCSD. Who knows why women in California don’t matriculate at the big publics at the numbers you’d like. Could be any number of reasons-better money elsewhere, desire for smaller environment, etc. One of my sons is dating a young woman from California that went to Harvey Mudd in Computer Science. I may see her this weekend. If I were nosier, maybe I’d ask her why she didn’t just go to UCB.

117

@sevmom That would be very interesting. I’d love to know why she chose Mudd over UCB COE. Was she admitted to L&S or COE?

There are two trends in women in engineering - those schools that are actively trying to encourage the enrollment of women because they have come to realize it is good for their schools and those that seem to pay lip-service to the idea but do nothing. Given that the UCs educate a huge number of top engineering students, it seems they could either be a big part of contributing to more opportunities for women in engineering or continue to be a part of the problem.

118

I have no idea, @CaliDad2020 if she applied or not… Her older brother also went to Mudd. But, a survey of women students certainly could be interesting to try and get at why women are going elsewhere. But, who is going to do that?

119

@sevmom some researchers have tried. I recall seeing some research on it at one point.

Honestly, UCB and UCLA should be doing that research. Given that their female SIR numbers are lower than their male SIR numbers, conscientious Admins should want to know why. Obviously, they are losing the yield game for part of their student body (and, given the success of female engineering students at UCSD, they might be harming the overall quality of the department.) Most schools would want to know why.

120

Still, I’m more interested in what would help more girls choose engineering as a profession, rather than why those girls who already decided to be engineers choose one school over another. If girls have an accurate view of engineering and don’t want to be that, why? What can we do to change that? If their view of engineering is skewed, what can we do to fix that? If they are choosing Stanford over UCB, that tells us something about those schools and maybe something about what top female students who have lots of excellent choices are looking for in terms of environment, but it doesn’t tell us anything about why all the other girls who could have chosen engineering did not.