Knight, D., Kim, S., & Nunez, A. M. (2020, April). Assessing Gender and Racial/Ethnic Parity in the Computing Fields: Evidence from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. In Annual meeting program American Educational Research Association.

Data show that science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) postsecondary training programs lack gender and racial/ethnic diversity. Recent policy efforts are aimed at creating more inclusive environments for underrepresented groups in STEM and several national reports highlight progress. We argue that prior analyses have not considered institutional contexts and changes in the demographics of students enrolled in higher education more broadly. We propose new measures of gender and racial/ethnic parity in the computing fields. Using these measures, we find that while computing fields have made progress in the number of female students and students of color receiving degrees, gender and racial/ethnic parity has changed little and, in some cases, declined. We conclude with recommendations for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers.