CMU SCS gender equality

[Data10]

@Bill_Marsh

Research shows that women more often leave engineering careers than do men. I wonder if CMU found the same thing, i.e. that after recruiting women to engineering majors, more of them dropped out of engineering majors than did males, thereby defeating the attempts at gender balance that they had initiated in the first place.

As noted earlier, I don’t think this is the reason for the change, but available stats are below.

Fall 2019 Entering Class (as listed in article graphs)
College of Engineering – 44% Women
School of Computer Science – 48% Women
College of Humanities and Social Sciences – 52% Women
All CMU Students – 50% Women

2023-24 Bachelor’s Degree Recipients (as listed in IPEDS)
College of Engineering Majors – 37% Women
School of Computer Science Majors – 47% Women
College of Humanities and Social Sciences – 57% Women
All CMU Students – 49% Women

I wouldn’t assume CMU stats above align well with other colleges. Engineering persistence rate by gender is all over the map for different colleges. Influential factors can include things like whether colleges admit by major or school, or encourage students to try out different majors; whether colleges have more/less selective admission for different genders; whether colleges have a notable % female students/TAs/professors/role models/… and related support mechanisms; etc.