
How Harvey Mudd College increased the ratio of women in CS - steven
https://backchannel.com/at-harvey-mudd-college-the-ratio-of-women-in-cs-increased-from-10-to-40-in-5-years-4bb72e909fbd#.yqq538plu
======
gwern
This has been discussed in the past on HN
([https://hn.algolia.com/?query=harvey%20mudd&sort=byPopularit...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=harvey%20mudd&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)).
The real howto is simple: take a tiny elite college; spend a _staggering_
amount of money poaching the few women interested in CS to your college and
loosening admission rates; proceed to talk only about percentages when
boasting about your success.

~~~
phasmantistes
First, you present this statement as though all the other conversations on HN
about Harvey Mudd have come to the same conclusion. This is demonstrably not
true.

Second, I'd like to encourage you to not describe recruiting and admitting
women as "lossening admission rates". That's the kind underhanded, unconscious
sexism that we're trying to avoid here. Even if I accept as true that a higher
percentage of men are qualified to be admitted to HMC's CS program (which I
don't, but for the sake of argument...) the _absolute_ number of people --
men, women, and otherwise -- who qualify is so much larger than what HMC can
support that it could admit a class of _0_ men and not have to worry about
"lowering its standards".

It sounds like you've lost sight of the forest for the trees. Sure, a larger
school might be able to have a larger impact. Sure, maybe Mudd isn't doing as
much as it could, or is spending more money than it should. But it is still
doing something demonstrably effective, which is more than most places can
say.

~~~
forgetsusername
> _That 's the kind underhanded, unconscious sexism that we're trying to avoid
> here_

I'm interested in facts, not political correctness. Were admission rates
loosened to accomplish the goals, or were they not?

> _It sounds like you 've lost sight of the forest for the trees._

Or have you? To me, the forest is graduating the best CS students, regardless
of colour, race or gender.

~~~
phasmantistes
> Were admission rates loosened to accomplish the goals, or were they not?

They were not. The class of 2014 (admitted in 2010) consisted of 101 women and
95 men, having more women than men for the first time in the college's
history. The following year it swung back the other way, with only 42% of the
incoming class being female. In both years, the same percent of admitted
students were valedictorians or salutatorians at their high schools. In both
years, the 75%ile SAT and ACT scores remained the same. Admittedly, I don't
have access to all of the data, but the numbers I have show that there was no
loosening of admission rates.

> graduating the best CS students, regardless of colour, race or gender.

I maintain two counterpoints to this argument:

* Especially when you're talking on the scale of admitting 200 students a year (only ~40 of whom will be CS majors) the difference between the best 200 men in the country and the best 200 women in the country is exceedingly small, if it exists at all. So given that the school is going to admit 200 _equally qualified_ people no matter what, it might as well admit them in the ratio that it chooses.

* That statement has an implicit assumption that _individuals_ are the best CS students. With a few notable exceptions, this is not true in the wider worlds of academia or professional industry. Teams with diverse skill sets, view points, knowledge, and experience perform the best in both academia and industry. So rather than trying to produce the 40 best individual computer scientists every year, Mudd tries to produce the 40 best team players who will succeed and make their chosen teams better by a multiplicative factor, rather than just an additive one.

EDIT: s/colleges/highschools/ when speaking of valedictorians

------
caseysoftware
I serve on the CS advisory board at another college that competes head to head
with Harvey Mudd for students. Generally, when one of these schools celebrates
having more women or a higher ratio than the others, it means they've managed
to _recruit_ more of a static pool rather than growing the pool.

The college that I advise at took another approach to grow the pool while also
recruiting better from the pool. They encourage profs to work with Girl Scout
troops on science projects, to get students to tutor junior high and high
school kids in general, and build relationships long before the normal "I have
to think about college" thoughts begin.

~~~
jacobush
It's not like recruiting more from a static pool is a bad thing either.

But it's commendable your place is actually trying to grow the pool, I have a
feeling you should start 10 years earlier. Help children feel CS is a natural
place for women to be, you'll be getting somewhere. This sounds like the
correct approach.

~~~
caseysoftware
This is less about CS specifically and more about STEM in general.. critical
thinking, problem solving, and asking for help when you need it are things
that _everyone_ can benefit from more of.

------
gjkood
What can I do to increase the ratio of women in CS/Engineering?

As the parent of a teenage boy and pre-teen girls here is what I do/can do.

Start/Coach/Mentor a FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Team for your teenager. I
coach an FTC team.

Start/Coach/Mentor a FIRST Lego League (FLL) Team for your pre-teen kids. I am
in the process of forming an FLL team.

Have them recruit their friends/classmates into the team.

It can be a mixed gender team or all girls team.

Training to compete in these events force you into being part of a team, apply
STEM principles learned in school into actual practical engineering
applications. Build Robots and have fun doing so.

The FLL teams eventually feed into FTC or FRC teams.

I think this will give them very early experiences into what engineering is
all about and give them the confidence to take up these streams in later life.

What is important is that at the earlier ages they are not yet peer pressured
into gender specific expectations and is exposed to these topics in a positive
way.

~~~
apta
> What can I do to increase the ratio of women in CS/Engineering?

The question is, why do you want to increase the ratio of women? Is it just
for the sake of increasing the ratio? That's not the way to go then.

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fhood
I think that splitting intro classes by experience is really important. In
intro classes a lot of the more experienced (and thus less socially able)
students are actively intimidating. I was helping out with a 100 level project
and on the class forum people were "helping" by suggesting the use of regex
and bit shifting. Intro students don't have to know about that yet, but seeing
it in those settings makes them feel like they are behind everyone else.

~~~
seizethecheese
> In intro classes a lot of the more experienced (and thus less socially able)
> students are actively intimidating.

I think the developer community should try to not perpetuate the stereotype
that those with experience programming necessarily don't have social skills.
This type of thing is what pigeonholes us as "nerds" who are incapable of
being involved in the business side of projects.

~~~
wskinner
Not sure why this is getting downvoted.

I would add that in my own experience (took CS61a at Berkeley with no prior
programming and little math) those guys who already had a lot of knowledge
were inspiring and a great asset. Working with more knowledgable people is a
fundamental feature of industry and academia, and if you view it from the
right perspective, it doesn't have to be intimidating.

------
holmak
I wonder what fraction of male Computer Science majors also come into their
first semester with no programming experience. When I was a freshman, it
seemed like absolutely everyone in my CS classes had been programming for
years, but surely that's not the case for everyone?

Anyway, the bit about (comparatively) experienced programmers intimidating the
other students in freshman classes is a real and terrible thing. I thoroughly
support shoving all those students into a different class; it is disruptive to
have them in an intro course.

~~~
alistairSH
I can't speak about today, but when I started college (1995), it was common
for students in the intro CS course to have zero experience coding. Some had
built basic web pages, some had used *nix machines, but not many with actual
coding.

But, this course was also required for ALL engineers, so there were many
separate sections/classes, and probably 80% or greater weren't interested in
CS as a degree/career.

~~~
ghaff
I suspect, although I don't have the numbers, that there is a huge difference
between 1995 and today. Open source was barely on most people's radar screens
in 1995 and you're talking about the very early days of widespread Internet
access.

~~~
alistairSH
Absolutely, that's why I included the year.

I think '95 was the first or second year for campus-wide high-speed internet
at UVA. VT was a year ahead and one of the first in the nation, if I remember
correctly.

All that said, the approach of splitting the introductory class up by previous
experience makes some sense. I can't think of too many other subjects where
the experience level would differ by so much at such an entry-level stage.

------
zeveb
> They redesigned the intro computer science course to focus more on creative
> problem solving. Instead of traditional homework, the faculty assigned team-
> based projects so that students coded together. And, most important, they
> made the courses fun and emphasized ways in which CS can benefit society.

What exactly does the first sentence mean? What is an example of an increased
focus on problem solving, and on what was focus decreased?

Are team assignments really just a way for weak performers to glide? I know in
my own college career that was my experience.

Is computer science about fun and benefiting society, or is it, y'know, the
science of computation? Is it better to build a population of computer
scientists who find the science of computation fun and self-evidently
beneficial, or one of computer scientists who don't?

~~~
phasmantistes
Ugh yeah that sentence made me cringe. It doesn't do the intro courses justice
at all. As someone who has both taken and graded those courses, I'll try to
clarify.

The intro courses don't consist of homework like "write a function which does
X", and they aren't graded like "your function produced the correct output".

Instead, the homework consists of week- to two-week-long projects in which the
student produces a moderately complex piece of code. Depending on the point in
the semester, this could be anything from a collection of pure mutually-
recursive functions, a self-contained class with a nice api boundary, a
collection of classes to draw some graphics format, or something else
entirely.

The homework is always done in pairs, and you're not allowed to work on it
unless your partner is present for pair programming. During official lab
timeslots, students are told to trade off "driving" (using the keyboard) every
15 minutes to half hour.

Finally, the assignments are graded both on whether they produce the correct
output and the clarity and efficiency of the code.

Student pairs are switched up multiple times throughout the semester, and the
graders/tutors ("grutors") spend significant amounts of time working with each
pair and making sure that _both_ members understand what's going on.

------
fiatmoney
Why is shifting people from one major into another on face desirable? We
should be glad there are less, eg, female biology majors and future doctors?

~~~
raldi
If a young woman has equal potential as a future doctor or computer scientist,
then sure, it's zero-sum whether she picks one versus the other.

The problem is, there are undoubtedly a large number of young women out there
who have the potential to become great programmers and love their careers, but
for whatever reason, they're ending up becoming average doctors instead and
feeling just so-so about their career choice.

In the latter case, it's better for both the women in question, and society in
general, to support their becoming computer scientists.

~~~
saulrh
My SO is one of the women who are better off because they got through a CS
degree instead of an alternate. She could have been a good molecular biologist
or teacher, but she's a _spectacular_ software engineer, especially for those
high-level business-use/architectural tasks that a lot of devs can't handle.
She'd be a lot less happy right now if her dad had managed to succeed in
convincing her that girls can't program.

------
aplusbi
What I find most interesting about this is that most of the changes they
implemented weren't necessarily targeted towards women and benefited everyone
(emphasis on group work, research projects, splitting the into classes by
experience).

~~~
mafribe

        emphasis on group work,
    

It's very questionable that this is a positiv change. While it is important
(and difficult) to acquire teamwork skills, in practise, most groups gravitate
towards one might call "Pareto Groups" where 20% of the participants do 80% of
the work. Usually the strong programmers in the group do all the programming,
thus getting all the learning experience.

~~~
phasmantistes
With the exception of two classes (Clinic and Large Software Development,
which are both explicitly about learning to work in large teams), all the
group work you do in the Mudd CS program is pair programming. The groups are 2
people, and you're required to take turns "driving".

While I definitely experienced an unfortunate amount of "Pareto Groups"
throughout my schooling, none of them were in the CS department at HMC.

------
Kenji
I still don't understand why a low ratio of women is considered a problem to
be solved. Let people do what they want. Other majors have less men - so what?
I loathe this retarded rhetoric. Has our society ran out of real problems?

~~~
Lawtonfogle
It depends upon why there is a low ratio. For example, if less men are being
grade school teachers due to sexist double standards on judgments of
teacher/student interactions, then that is an issue that needs to be fixed.
The low ratio is a symptom, not the problem itself, but it helps indicate a
problem that needs to be fixed.

My issue is that sometimes instead of fixing the underlying problem(s), some
people want to apply a patch that ends up not helping (or maybe making things
worse).

~~~
Kenji
I don't think a low ration of women indicates a problem that needs to be
fixed. I think this is a complete fallacy. I'd like to hear proof of why that
is, then we can start fixing it.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Maybe not a complete fallacy. Some likely reasons: men hire more men. Women
are hired but pushed out by stress. Women don't get promoted (or tenure or
whatever) so leave. Women have heard its a terrible place for women and don't
apply.

All of these things should be fixed, if applicable. Because they are patently
unfair to half the talented pool of candidates. Any school that pretends to
understand mathematics would understand that puts the school at a
disadvantage.

~~~
Kenji
>Maybe not a complete fallacy.

Maybe it isn't. But we should approach this maturely. Often, there is no
evidence for systemic discrimination and the stories are anecdotal and vague
feelings of oppression. For example, it is often said that women are pushed
out of CS courses because they are hostile environments to women, but when I
attend uni I see that everything is completely technical and gender just
doesn't play a role. You sit in the same lectures, do the same exercises, the
same exams. Absolutely fair. When I ask women why they don't study CS, pretty
much nobody says "Well, I tried uni but I was discriminated against", no, they
say "Oh. It just doesn't interest me." The biggest issue, however, is when
force enters the picture. Women quotas, affirmative actions, and the like.
This is the true face of discrimination, and what an ugly face it is. I am in
strict opposition of such actions because they distort the market and harm the
freedom of choice and the development of talents.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
If those experiences were universal, then what a wonderful world. If they are
not, then something should be done. It seems to be a harmful approach, to
campaign against attempts to restore fairness and equity, because "I don't see
the problem"

~~~
Kenji
I don't "campaign against attempts to restore fairness". I don't care about
subjective experiences of people. I doubt that there is actually systemic
discrimination or unfairness and demand proof for such a thing. And, I doubt
the measures that are taken to fight this supposed unfairness are helpful, in
fact, those measures themselves are a gross discrimination. I think I clearly
made my point in my previous messages. I am all for equal opportunity. That is
_precisely_ why I am against affirmative action.

------
DrScump
They could have called this program "Mudd's Women", but Paramount might have
sued.

------
CyberDildonics
Did they also increase the number of men in social work majors?

~~~
phasmantistes
The school primarily offers only STEM majors: Physics, Chemistry, Biology,
Engineering, Computer Science, Math, and combinations of the above. It is
associated with 4 other neighboring schools (Scripps, Pitzer, Pomona, and
Claremont-McKenna), and so some students end up doing off-campus majors in
History, Dance, Linguistics, or other fields, but that is comparatively rare
(1 or 2 off-campus majors per graduating class, I think).

~~~
kelukelugames
You are fighting the good fight. I'm curious what kind of people think really
think gender equality for social workers is a more pressing issue.

