Education, Industry Leaders See Legal Threats to Diversity in Higher Ed S&T Programs

Recent U.S. court decisions limiting efforts to recruit underrepresented minority students pose a profound challenge for colleges, universities and science-related industries, educators and business leaders said at a recent forum co-sponsored by AAAS. Still, they said, many effective programs are in place, and others could be put in place, that meet the legal standard of strict scrutiny and result in more diversified student bodies.

Some 35 invited experts, comprising the academic, nonprofit, and business communities, gathered to discuss these issues on 15 January in Washington, D.C., at a roundtable organized by AAAS and NACME, the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering. The event was organized, with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, in the wake of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in June 2007, holding that public school districts may not use race as a factor in assigning pupils to particular schools.

"We all wish that special initiatives were unnecessary to produce a diverse STEM [science, technology, engineering, mathematics] workforce, and we certainly want a color-blind society," Shirley Malcom, head of Education and Human Resources at AAAS, told the audience. "But we are not there yet. We can pretend or assume that we are and watch the steady erosion of enrollments of underrepresented students in our major university STEM programs. Or we can acknowledge the reality of unequal education and access, and develop interventions that are thoughtful and defensible. The roundtable helped us think our way through this minefield."

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