CS Programs Changing to Attract Women Students

Magnifico writes "The New York times is running an article about a push by American universities to actively recruit women into Computer Science courses. The story, 'Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold', explains that the number of women in CS is shrinking: 'Women received about 38 percent of the computer science bachelor's degrees awarded in the United States in 1985, the peak year, but in 2003, the figure was only about 28 percent, according to the National Science Foundation.' One of the largest barriers to recruiting women to the field is the nerd factor. To attract women students to the CS field, 'Moving emphasis away from programming proficiency was a key to the success of programs Dr. Blum and her colleagues at Carnegie Mellon instituted to draw more women into computer science.' Changes at CMU increased women students in the CS program from 8 percent to nearly 40 percent."

Comments

Re:Great for the gene pool

[Chris Burke]

Yeah I read the article, and I don't know where you're getting that. I see them de-emphasizing programming experience for acceptance to the program, and I see them talking more about uses and applications for computers than just the programming of them. No mention of actually changing the curriculum. Maybe adjusting teaching styles, but what's wrong with that? The difference between what these people think women want and the men I described in my post thinking they know what women want is that the people at CMU actually talked to women to get an idea of what they wanted, and have shown success as a result.