In this series, professionals at the Milken Institute Global Conference debate the most pressing issues facing their industries today. Write your own #MIGlobal post here.

Kimberly Bryant studied electrical engineering at Vanderbilt University, but she did a lot more than just go to class while she was in school.

On top of her rigorous coursework, Bryant took on a work-study as well as a job to support her family back home. While post of her peers from high-earning families could take on unpaid internships to further their expertise in engineering and computer science, Bryant couldn’t add another expense to her or her family’s already exhausted budget.

“Most kids go to the post office in college to get a care package. My care package was going the other way,” Bryant said on a panel I moderated at Milken Global on Wednesday. “A student of color, most of them cannot take an unpaid internships.”

Fifteen years later, Bryant is now the founder of Black Girls Code, a not-for-profit organization that focuses on providing technology education to African-American girls. Despite the time that has passed since she was one of the few African-American women pursuing a STEM education, she says the field remains largely inaccessible for students from low-income backgrounds. Not only are unpaid internships to gain skills after school or during the summers out of reach, but the resources for STEM education in low-income neighborhoods remain negligible.

STEM jobs have increasingly become one of our richest sources of employment and economic opportunity. Yet only 16 percent of American high school seniors are proficient in math and interested in a STEM career. If those numbers are going to go up and the skills gap is going to shrink, we have to make STEM education accessible to Americans of all backgrounds, said Bryant.

“We need to address why we have such a low representation of women and minorities at every level [of STEM education,]” she said.

Bryant’s remarks were heard on stage by a cohort of prominent fellow panelists working to solve the same problem. Stanley Litow, the president of the IBM International Foundation, is focused on ensuring that our education system is equipping students with the skills that IBM needs to stay in business. Less than 10% of students from the lowest income quartile graduate with a bachelor’s degree by age 24. At the same time, there are 28 million “middle-skill jobs” – jobs that require an associate degree or similar technical training shy of a four-year degree – with 14 million additional jobs to be added by 2018.

Rather than wait for our education system to self-correct, IBM launched a pilot program in New York to create a clearer pathway for low-income students from high school to college to career that includes paid summer internships. In six years or less, graduates of the program walk away with a high school diploma and a no-cost, two-year associate degree connected to a growth industry. It’s still early days, but the program is showing promise: Over half the graduates have enrolled in college courses to pursue their STEM education further and IBM has hired a sizable chunk of the graduating classes into entry level positions.

But the reality remains that most startups -- a hot bed for learning STEM skills -- can not afford to create programs or even pay their interns like IBM can. Brent Bushnell is the CEO of Two Bit Circus, an LA-based experiential entertainment company that builds products and events that combine story and technology. He says his startup is the perfect place for low-skill students to not only learn about STEM but get excited about STEM careers, the problem is that paying them would take up resources that he can’t afford.

“For me to pay a kid who has no skills is a hard economic decision for us to make,” he said. “It is also a real project [to get college credit for an internship.] We did it, but I bet 90% of companies wouldn’t.”

Tom Kalil, the deputy director for policy within the White House office of science and technology policy, is the policy guy trying to sort out the needs of Litlow, Bushnell, Bryant and all the constituencies they represent. While the administration is a big fan of internship programs like Bushnell’s and apprenticeship programs like Litlow’s, Kalil said that other countries like Germany do a much better job of preparing their students for careers in STEM.

To diversify the talent going into STEM jobs, Kalil says the White House has a number of initiatives going on like TechHire. In up to 50 cities, employers are working directly with training providers to work with students on the skills they need in an accelerated way to get jobs filled.

“Improving the diversity of our workforce is a social justice issue and an economic issue, but it’s also important because IT is having such a pervasive impact on our economy and our society,” Kalil said.

Black Girl Code’s Bryant, who is optimistic about programs that both the White House and the private sector are implementing, says that their just needs to more -- and they need to get to scale. You can watch our full discussion below, and read more of our coverage from Milken Global here.

Update: The comments on this post have been amazing. Some commenters had some thoughtful things to say about the original headline, so I changed it to reflect their concerns.