Editorial: The minority STEM crisis — Brown Daily Herald

Editorial: The minority STEM crisis — Brown Daily Herald: Last semester, The Herald published a series called “Missing Scientists” exploring the minority students at Brown involved in what is colloquially known as STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Both at Brown and across the country, students who describe themselves as underrepresented minorities — American Indian, Alaskan native, black, Hispanic/Latino, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander — are much less likely to receive degrees in the sciences, specifically the hard sciences, than the general student population. Last spring, for instance, students who self-identified as one of the aforementioned categories constituted 13.5 percent of the graduating class, but received only 5.6 percent of physical science degrees and 9 percent of engineering degrees. From 2009-13, according to the Office of Institutional Research, 4 percent of URM students graduated with degrees in physical sciences, compared to 12 percent of students who identified as non-URM.