Washington Monthly - September/October 2020 - 28

(see "Colleges Where Majors Popular with Black Students Pay
Well," page 48). But these are the exceptions. Overwhelmingly,
majors with explicit social justice upsides pay considerably less
than STEM. It's a fact that reflects poorly on the United States,
which chronically undervalues professions dedicated to helping others.
But it's a fact nonetheless, and one that makes researchers concerned about the future earnings of young Black Americans. "[College] might be the only opportunity there is for
them to enter the middle class," Nicole Smith, the chief economist at Georgetown University's Center on Education and
the Workforce, told me. While students should be free to pick
their own areas of study, Smith said, it's especially important
for people of color to consider their career prospects when deciding. "Your very first job is a platform from which all of your
other wages will be determined," she said.
In explaining why so few Black students study STEM,
Smith-like many other education experts-homed in on
America's segregated K-12 education system. It's easy to see
why. Institutionalized racism has shut Black Americans out of
neighborhoods with high-performing schools and funneled
them into districts with fewer monetary and academic resources. As a result, many Black students arrive at college without
the math and science skills needed to pursue advanced STEM
classes. "It's a done deal," Smith said.
But while the pipeline problem, as it's often called in policy circles, is real, it cannot by itself explain the disparity. In a
2019 study of racial gaps in STEM, three researchers followed
the academic trajectories of more than 5,000 Black, Latino,
and white American college students. They compared Black
students, Latino students, and white students who had similar levels of academic preparation, had similar financial backgrounds, and were alike in all manner of other ways-from
their parents' education levels to their SAT scores. They found
that Black STEM students were 14 percentage points more
likely to switch out of STEM than white students from similar circumstances, and 15 percentage points more likely to drop
out of school altogether. Latino STEM students were 14 percentage points more likely to drop out of college than similarly
positioned white ones. (Notably, this pattern wasn't present in
non-STEM fields.)
"This was not a transfer and dropping-out pattern that
we found among students who were underprepared," said Yasmiyn Irizarry, a quantitative sociologist at UT Austin and one
of the paper's authors. "This was among students that were
equally prepared."
So what else is at play? Many academics cite the chronically low number of Black faculty in technical fields. It's a compelling explanation. Research suggests that the lack of Black
STEM academics means that many Black STEM students
struggle to envision themselves progressing in their disciplines. One 2019 study by a collection of psychology professors
and STEM researchers found that Black female STEM students
were far more likely to experience feelings of belonging with
Black professors than with white ones. Indeed, many Black
28 September/October 2020

female STEM students at largely white institutions told the
surveyors they had no mentors. This has very tangible consequences. Research shows that students of color perform better
on tests when faculty of color are present, and there's a positive correlation between the number of minority faculty at a
school and the likelihood that its students of color persist.
When I spoke to Black STEM graduates who attended
predominantly white schools, several said they might have
left had it not been for the support of Black faculty. Raheem
Beyah, for example, Georgia Institute of Technology's vice
president for interdisciplinary research and an electrical engineering professor, partially credited his success to the mentorship of Gary May, a Black engineer famous both for his work
on computer-aided manufacturing and for his efforts to bring
minority students into STEM fields. Beyah tries to pay it forward. "When students come into my office, I know what their
concerns are, because I had the same concerns," he said.
Indeed, simply seeing other, more advanced Black students can make an impact. Tahira Reid Smith, an engineering
professor at Purdue University, decided to study mechanical
engineering on the recommendation of an older Black classmate. She opted to become an academic after watching several
other Black students in her Bible study group do so. "It was implicitly inspiring," she said.
It's therefore not surprising that historically Black colleges and universities are the biggest producers of Black engineers and scientists. A full 27 percent of Black students with
bachelor's degrees in STEM fields went to HBCUs. Several of
these schools have particularly excellent track records of graduating students into high-paying jobs. According to a Washington Monthly analysis of new program-level data offered by the
Department of Education, for example, Tuskegee University's
mechanical engineering graduates have a median income of
$65,300 in their first year after graduating, which exceeds the
median first-year income for all mechanical engineering graduates by roughly $3,000. Its chemical engineering graduates
have a median income of $67,200-also well above average.
But while it's critical that schools hire more Black STEM
faculty and build communities of Black students, it still won't
be enough. Even with an aggressive push, reaching racial parity
in STEM departments will take time-particularly for tenured
positions, where turnover is especially slow. And while many
Black faculty and older students enjoy mentoring, the process
places a large, unpaid service burden on people who are already
overstretched.
"I don't think this is about patching Black students to
Black faculty," said Irizarry. Instead, she told me, STEM departments in general-and their white professors in particular-
need to think hard about why so many students of color are
leaving. "A commitment to self-reflection is what is lacking."

hen it comes to race, STEM professors have much to
reflect on. Departments can stereotype some Black
students as underprepared despite evidence to the
contrary. They can make others feel that they owe any success

Washington Monthly - September/October 2020

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