To Solve the Diversity Drought in Software Engineering, Look to Community Colleges (vice.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Community college is not flashy and does not make promises about your future employability. You will also likely not learn current way-cool web development technologies like React and GraphQL. In terms of projects, you're more likely to build software for organizing a professor's DVD or textbook collection than you are responsive web apps. I would tell you that all of this is OK because in community college computer science classes you're learning fundamentals, broad concepts like data structures, algorithmic complexity, and object-oriented programming. You won't learn any of those things as deeply as you would in a full-on university computer science program, but you'll get pretty far. And community college is cheap, though that varies depending on where you are. Here in Portland, OR, the local community college network charges $104 per credit. Which means it's possible to get a solid few semesters of computer science coursework down for a couple of grand. Which is actually amazing. In a new piece published in the Communications of the ACM, Silicon Valley researchers Louise Ann Lyon and Jill Denner make the argument that community colleges have the potential to play a key role in increasing equity and inclusion in computer science education. If you haven't heard, software engineering has a diversity problem. Access to education is a huge contributor to that, and Denner and Lyon see community college as something of a solution in plain sight.

Comments

alternative

[micahraleigh]

How about we start allowing ourselves to hire developers over 45 ?

Re:alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

Based upon that statement, you MUST work in HR and not in any kind of engineering.

Solve?

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't a diversity problem. Diversity isn't related to any challenges in software engineering.

problem

[religionofpeas]

If you haven't heard, software engineering has a diversity problem

There's unequal participation. That doesn't mean there's a problem.

Re:problem

[religionofpeas]

We should expect to see participation at around the same percentages as the population of the area.

Why should we expect that ? Do you think everybody has the same interests ?

Try a simple experiment. Go to youtube, and look up videos on "Arduino". Check the ratio of men and women. Now do the same for "Scrapbooking".

Nobody is stopping women from ordering an Arduino and recording a video, and nobody's stopping men from ordering some scrapbook supplies. The barrier to entry is extremely low in both cases. How come we still see this division ?

Simple: different interests. The average woman thinks Arduino is stupid, and the average man thinks scrapbooking is stupid.

Does diversity results in better code?

[sinij]

Does diversity results in better code? Please provide citations.

Quality Beats Diversity

[Anonymous Coward]

At least in the minds of everyone but the Social Justice Warrior set.

Being a different skin color or sex doesn't improve coding ability. The year is 2017, not 1959; there are no legal structures keeping black people from studying programming or being hired by any company who choses to do so. Jim Crow is dead.

Stop pretending that the United States of America is the most racist nation in the world, when in actually it is probably the least racist country.

Just stop shoving this SJW bullshit down our throat, Slashdot. It isn't helping, and it isn't working.

Big fan

[AlanBDee]

I'm a big fan of Community Colleges for one reason, they're inexpensive. I think we can all agree that you don't need a degree to be a good software engineer, although a degree can increase the salary you can demand and the return on investment is worth it.

Given that, it makes sense to start in a Community College and then finish up at a local in-state university. If I look at Salt Lake Community College and Weber State University in Utah you could do this for under $20k with room to spare.

In the end, it's how well you can program, not what school you went to.

Not $104 per credit. For most in Oregon, it's free

[StevenMaurer]

Here in Portland, OR, the local community college network charges $104 per credit.

Thanks entirely to the Democratic ownership of the state legislature and the governorship, Oregon promises free community college for any legal state resident starting out college from highschool (or GED), who isn't a trust fund baby, and has at least a 2.5 GPA, via the Oregon Promise Grant. You do have to file out some forms, but then you're golden.

You must meet all of the following criteria:

• Complete an Oregon Promise Grant Application by the appropriate deadline
• File a FAFSA or ORSAA application and list at least one Oregon community college
• Be a recent Oregon high school graduate or GED recipient
• Document a 2.5 cumulative high school GPA or higher; or a GED score of 145 or higher on each test
• Plan to attend at least half-time at an Oregon community college within 6 months of high school graduation or GED completion
• Be an Oregon resident for at least 12 months prior to college attendance
• Must not have more than 90 college credits completed or attempted
• Beginning with Fall 2017 applicants, students may be subject to eligibility criteria based on their Expected Family Contribution (EFC). The EFC limit for 2017-18 applicants is $18,000. New applicants who are above the EFC limit will not be eligible for an award. The EFC criteria is subject to change.

There are plenty of web development classes as well.