Blog Post

AEIdeas

Update: I originally was only able to find data from the Department of Education website for bachelor degrees by field and gender back to 1993 and created the top chart above. Over the weekend, I was able to access historical college degree data back to 1970 and created the second chart above. The female share of computer science bachelor’s degrees actually peaked at 37.1% in 1984 before going into a steady decline for about the next quarter century and stabilizing at about 18% starting in 2008 at about half the share of the 1984 peak.

As I mentioned before below I’m skeptical of the efforts to invest resources in an attempt to “socially engineer” a significantly higher female share of computer science degrees that would reverse the long-term downward trend over the last 32 years that is displayed graphically above. Women are succeeding so successfully overall in higher education and in many STEM and STEM-related fields like medicine (females are now the majority of medical school students and graduates), pharmacy (62% of degrees), clinical psychology (79% of degrees), biology (60% 0f degrees), and veterinary medicine (80%, see chart above), that the significant decline of 50% in the female share of computer science degrees since 1984 would seem to be more likely the result of individual “revealed preferences,” voluntary choices and academic/career interests than of gender barriers to success.

For example, the female share of veterinary medicine degrees increased from 20% in the early 1970s when it was a male-dominated field to an 80% share in recent years to the point that the female-male ratio in veterinary medical schools is now 4-to-1.

Q1: If the female share of veterinary medicine degrees in a previously male-dominated field increased from a minority share in the mid-1980s to an 80% share in recent years at the same time that the female share of computer science degrees went from 37% to 18%, shouldn’t both of those trends be considered the direct result of individual preferences and voluntary choices?

Q2: If gender under-presentation is a concern when women are in the minority (like Computer Science), why isn’t it a concern when men are in the minority (Veterinary Medicine)?

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Original Post:

Do a Google search for “Girls Code” and you’ll find nearly half a million results for girls coding clubs (Black Girls Code, Latina Girls Code, Girls Who Code), girls summer code camps and programs, and news reports of corporations contributing millions of dollars to girls code initiatives, etc. Do a more narrow search for “Girls Code Camp” and you’ll get more than 9,000 results. Then try “Boys Code Camp” and you’ll find fewer than ten results!

Despite the national obsession that more girls should code and major in Computer Science in college, the female share of Computer Science degrees has dropped from a high of 28.4% in 1994 and 1995 to a low of 17.7% in 2008 (and 2011), before increasing slightly to 18.7% in 2016 (most recent year available, see chart above). So the reality is that when female undergraduate college students, who earned 34.4% more bachelor’s degrees than their male counterparts in 2016, decide on their college major, they apparently are less interested in majoring in computer science than everybody else thinks they should.

Q: Is the declining share of female computer science bachelor’s degrees, despite the massive amount of resources, funding, attention and promotion of trying to get “girls to code,” evidence of a failed social engineering effort/experiment?

Perhaps gender activists could make the case that without the national obsession to increase the female share of computer science degrees there would have been an even greater decline in that share, and that therefore the stable female share of computer science degrees at 18% is a sign of success?? But I think you could make a stronger case that the significant ten percentage point decline in the female share of computer science degrees from 28% to 18%, despite the significant resources, funding and attention toward increasing female participation in computer science, is fairly strong evidence that the social engineering experiment to get “girls to code” has failed.