Author: Dean Anno Saxenian<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to go a week without seeing a new headline about the importance of data. It\u2019s being used to prevent heart attacks,<\/a> make factories more efficient,<\/a> and power self-driving cars.<\/a> Demand for data scientists is soaring: it\u2019s the fastest growing job in the US,<\/a>\u00a0according to LinkedIn. But as data science becomes an increasingly crucial field, women are missing out: only about 26 percent of data jobs are filled by women.<\/a>\u00a0And more to the point, the world is missing out on them.<\/p>\n Four years ago we did something that hadn\u2019t been done before at the UC Berkeley School of Information. We created a Master of Information and Data Science program designed to attract the best and the brightest, regardless of where they lived. It would be interdisciplinary, incorporating not just math and modeling, but also social science and policy. It would have great professors, small class sizes, and plenty of networking opportunities. But it would be different from other data science programs in one important way: it would be fully online.<\/p>\n By eliminating physical limitations, we aimed to reach more outstanding students in more places\u2014especially those who weren\u2019t in a position to move to Berkeley for two years.\u00a0 We partnered with education technology company, 2U, to build an innovative digital curriculum. And then we put it to the test.<\/p>\n Right away, we saw the power of the digital model. Our first class was a diverse group of students from eight states across the country, with backgrounds ranging from economics and astronomy to neuroscience and business operations. Many of these students already held advanced degrees\u2014MBAs, J.Ds, and PhDs\u2014and had extensive work experience to boot.<\/span><\/p>\n We also noticed a familiar trend: women were underrepresented in these early cohorts. In our first class, they made up only 20 percent of the student body. This kind of gender imbalance has plagued the STEM fields for decades. Fortunately the recruitment and retention data collected by 2U provided a possible answer and path forward. We saw first that we were retaining and graduating women at the same rate as men\u2014so the problem was not a lack of success in the program. We could also see that many women were intrigued by our program, and committed enough to begin their applicatio<\/span>ns. But at some point before clicking \u201csubmit\u201d these women were dropping out.\u00a0<\/p>\n One red flag appeared when we reviewed our application, which stressed the importance of a computer-science background. While statistics\u2014one key part of a data science degree\u2014is relatively popular among women,<\/a> computer science is not. Women make up only 18 percent of computer science majors nationwide.<\/a><\/p>\n I thought of the study showing that while men will apply to jobs for which they meet 60 percent of the qualifications, women won\u2019t apply unless they meet 100.<\/a> There were likely hundreds of talented candidates who were holding themselves back because they were missing this\u00a0 element of prerequisite education. What if we gave them the chance to make it up?<\/p>\n To fix this problem\u2014and, we hoped, help the best candidates make it through our rigorous application\u2014we created a \u201cbridge course.\u201d The goal was to help potential students achieve competence in Python, the premier high-level programming language for data science, to bridge the gap in their knowledge.<\/p>\n We hoped that the bridge would help us widen our pool of candidates. But we were especially delighted to see the bridge course immediately filled with women. And the following year, the percentage of women participating in our data science program shot up by 33 percent.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the kind of insight that\u2019s so simple that it almost seems obvious: by helping applicants fill a gap in their skills, we could welcome capable women who had shied away from completing the application to our program, likely because of their lack of programming background.<\/p>\n Lisa Barcelo, one of the students who enrolled in our bridge course, put it best. \u201cAs a woman in the workplace, it\u2019s easy to be deferential when presented with new challenges and to say, \u2018I\u2019m not sure or I don\u2019t want to assume that my answer is correct,\u2019\u201d she told me. \u201cThis course helped me to not only develop my skills, but also my confidence. I learned that I could find solutions to complex problems both in my academic endeavors and at work. That\u2019s the most powerful thing.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot more work to do, on the part of schools, businesses, and the public sector, to close the gender gap in data science and other STEM fields. But by using technology to broaden our applicant pool, and data analysis to identify and fix breaks in our system, we\u2019ve created a more inclusive program\u2014one where women are represented at a rate more than 50 percent above the national average.<\/p>\n As educators, we have an opportunity, and an obligation, to use new tools to reach new students. In the same way that our students\u2014through trial, error, and insight\u2014learn to master their subjects, we also find new ways to expand the reach of our teaching. When we create more inclusive programming, the whole world is better off for it. Just look at the data.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Go to Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"