TRACKING PROGRESS
Recent studies on career choices of graduate students reveal a significant attrition from biomedical research careers at rates that disproportionally affect women and underrepresented individuals.
Black women receive fewer engineering degrees than almost any other group—just 1% in 2015, according to the American Society for Engineering Education—and that number has declined since 2011. Fewer than 5% of engineers are women of color; more attention and support could help to increase diversity in engineering.
Only 24 percent of engineering master’s students and 22 percent of doctoral candidates are women. In regard to the engineering workforce, 15 percent of workers are women and 1 in 10 workers are either black, Hispanic, or American Indian.
If the proportion of underrepresented students attaining PhDs in science were the same as those attaining bachelor’s degrees in the sciences, the number of Hispanic/Latino science doctorates would need to double, and the number of Black/African American science doctorates would need to triple.
Only 4 out of the 107 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) nationwide offers a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Bioengineering related fields.