Maintaining Diversity in Computer Science
in the Face of Capacity Limitations
Eric Roberts
Clayman Institute for Research on Gender
March 5, 2015
A Noteworthy Anniversary
My Life Prior to Wellesley
• In the 1970s, I lived in a bifurcated world:
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Academically, I was deeply
involved in computer science.
Politically, I was deeply
committed to feminism.
• It became painfully clear that the opportunities open to the men I
knew in my academic work were far greater than those open to the
women with whom I shared my political energies.
• I decided to try to remedy the situation by setting up a computer
science program at a women’s college and ended up taking a
position at Wellesley in 1980.
The Success of the Wellesley Program
• In its first three years, Wellesley produced an average of 15
computer science graduates each year, which was enough to create a
measurable change in the percentage of women taking positions in
the computing industry in Massachusetts.
• One of my first students at Wellesley was Amy Pearl, who went on
to get a Master’s degree in computer science here at Stanford before
becoming a leading member of the Java team at Sun Microsystems.
Amy also authored two reports on the status of women in computer
science that were featured as cover stories in the flagship journal of
the ACM professional society.
• Other early graduates went on to take significant positions in
industry, and at least two of my students have gone on to academic
careers in computer science.
• Thirty-two years later, the Wellesley department is still producing
between 15 and 20 computer science majors each year.
When Did Things Change?
Women Attack Male-Dominated CS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zfqw8nhUwA
Superbowl Sunday, January 1984
The Challenge of Achieving Diversity
• The percentage of women majoring in computer science is small
relative to that of men.
• Participation by African American, Hispanic, and Native
American students is typically even smaller.
• Statistics on diversity in computer science have not improved in
recent years, despite gains in other fields. For women,
participation rates declined through most of the 1990s before
rebounding slightly at the end of the decade.
Images of Women in The Social Network
• Even though most images of women in The Social Network are
negative, both of the uniformly positive characters are women.
• At the beginning of the film, Erica Albright (Rooney Mara)
breaks up with Mark Zuckerberg with a harsh assessment of his
character.
• Erica’s words are neatly reprised at the end by the lawyer
Marylin Delpy (Rashida Jones).
• Neither of these women has anything to do with computers.
They represent the “adults” of the film.
The Bermuda Project
• Bermuda is a small island lying
600 miles east of North Carolina.
• Its land area is approximately 20
square miles (less than twice the
size of the Stanford campus).
• Its population is 62,000 (roughly
the size of Palo Alto) with two
public high schools: Berkeley
and Cedarbridge.
• In 1998, Stanford was asked to design a new computer science
curriculum for Bermuda’s public secondary schools.
• The Bermuda curriculum has been extremelyMarissa
successful.
Mayer Five
(now CEO of
Yahoo!)
years after graduation, more than 40% of students
who
had
taken at least two CS courses were working in an IT-related
job.
Image of Computing (California)
In 1998, sixth-graders in selected California schools were asked to
draw their image of a computer professional. The drawings are
for the most part aligned with traditional stereotypes:
Images of Computing (Bermuda)
In Bermuda, we repeated this experiment after students had taken
our courses and got rather different results:
Tsunami or Sea Change?
Responding to the Explosion of
Student Interest in Computer Science
Ed Lazowska
Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in
Computer Science & Engineering
University of Washington
Eric Roberts
Professor of Computer Science and
Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education
Stanford University
NCWIT 10th Anniversary Summit
May 2014
CS Enrollments Are Exploding
Stanford
MIT
2500
1200
2000
1000
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total
CS 106A
1000
500
CS 105
400
CS 101
200
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University of Pennsylvania
1000
900
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
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total
600
Harvard
800
700
600
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total
400
CIS 110
300
CIS 120
200
100
0
CS50
Challenges for Stanford
• Computer science has become increasingly popular, both as
a choice of major and as a field for elective study.
– CS is now by far the largest major at Stanford.
– CS has more majors than the humanities departments combined.
– More than 95% of Stanford undergraduates now take at least one
CS course.
– CS 106A is now the largest course at Stanford .by a factor of two.
Top Majors at Stanford
(as of July 2012)
Top Majors at Stanford
(as of July 2013)
Top Majors at Stanford
(as of October 21, 2014)
As of the end of 2014-15, CS has 911 majors, almost
three times the size of its next closest rival.
What a Stanford Woman in CS Looks Like
With 244 women declared at the end
of last year, CS is in a dead heat with
Hum Bio for the title of most popular
major for women at Stanford.
Challenges for Stanford
• Computer science has become increasingly popular, both as
a choice of major and as a field for elective study.
– CS is now by far the largest major at Stanford.
– CS has more majors than the humanities departments combined.
– More than 95% of Stanford undergraduates now take at least one
CS course.
– CS 106A is now the largest course at Stanford by a factor of two.
• The shift in enrollment patterns is starting to threaten
Stanford’s traditional balance.
• The growing student load is putting an unacceptable load on
the faculty, lecturers, teaching assistants, and undergraduate
section leaders.
The Cyclical Nature of CS Enrollments
• CS has experienced cyclical enrollments in the past.
• But cycles are not all the same. . . .
70,000
Computer Science Bachelors Degrees Granted
This decline was caused
by a fall in demand
after the dot-com
collapse
60,000
50,000
40,000
30,000
20,000
10,000
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This decline was caused
by a fall in capacity as
colleges and universities
found themselves unable
to satisfy the demand
We’ve Been Here Before
• The situation that Computer Science is likely to face over the
next five years is not unprecedented. Much the same situation
occurred in the 1980s.
• In the early 1980s, the availability of personal computers led to
an explosion of student interest in computer science. At some
universities, student demand doubled in a single year.
• Unfortunately, universities did not have the capacity to satisfy
the growing demand.
–
–
–
–
Workloads for faculty increased substantially.
Faculty members began to leave for greener pastures.
Replacement faculty were nearly impossible to find.
Graduate students turned away from academic careers.
The Kent Curtis Report
The Kent Curtis Report
The Kent Curtis Report
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The End