African American BS Degrees in Computer Engineering: Last Five Years (Updated w/2019 Data)

[For the update see the end of the article]

This is the third in a series this summer on African American undergraduate engineering degrees following the first two on chemical engineering and mechanical engineering. See also Rapid Degree Growth, Engineering Degree Trends, Filtered Pathways and Big Drop for more background. 

Computer engineering (CompE) has been consistently about eighth or ninth largest of degree categories reported by engineering colleges to the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). Some CompE data is also reported to the Computing Research Association (CRA) with the two datasets being mostly complementary and latter focusing mostly on doctorates and research. Although many long existing CompE programs grew from electrical engineering departments, more recently many CompE programs have grown from computer science departments. Computer engineering undergraduate degree growth has been just ahead of engineering overall across this period with CompE degrees having grown from 4.2% of all engineering degrees in 2009 to 5.2% in 2017. CompE is consistently the least gender-diverse of all engineering disciplines, although it has improved from 7.9 to 12.5% female degrees between 2009 and 2017 (See ASEE data in Engineering by the Numbers by Dr. Brian L. Yoder). Table 1 shows that across the past five years the fraction of domestic CompE degrees earned by African Americans has been fairly steady, and slightly ahead of the 4.1% seen for all engineering degrees, while the international fraction of all CompE BS degrees has increased.  

Table 1 Computer Engineering Bachelor’s Degrees (ASEE Data- African American % is the fraction of domestic US degrees)

Because the overall numbers can be quite small for individual institutions, it is easiest to assess degree production across several years at one time. Of the 187 CompE programs that reported CompE BS degrees to ASEE in each of the five years from 2013 to 2017, 134 reported one or more degrees earned by African Americans. These programs reported graduating classes averaging 25 total students with the median graduating class numbering 17, although both the number of programs and the size of existing programs is growing. The size of the programs is also masked by the fact that at many institutions CompE is a specialization within an otherwise larger electrical and computer engineering, computer science or similarly-named department. Degrees offered in this realm include electrical engineering with specializations in computer engineering, those labeled specifically as electrical and computer engineering, and a small number of computer science and engineering or similarly-named degrees. For this post we are only considering the programs that provide data in the ASEE CompE category. 

Table 2 shows the total CompE BS degree production for universities reporting twenty or more African American graduates across the past five years. These nine institutions produced almost one-third of the African American CompE BS degrees reported to ASEE during the five years, but there are considerable differences in the attributes and scale of the institutions in this table. Three of the institutions, Prairie View A&M, North Carolina A&T, and Florida A&M/Florida State^ are historically-black institutions and another four, Georgia Tech, North Carolina State, Central Florida, and Florida are among the top twenty-five producers of engineering degrees overall.  

Table 2 Top African American Computer Engineering BS Degree Producers 2013-2017 (Five Year Total- ASEE Data except where noted)

Of the 187 CompE degree programs that reported African American BS degrees, 110 of these institutions are public doctoral universities. Table 3 shows the ten CompE doctorate-producing public institutions with the highest fraction of African American CompE BS degree recipients across the 2013-2017 five-year period and the population fraction of African Americans in those states (census.gov 2010). The top ten producers of all CompE BS degrees at public doctoral institutions produced more than 37% of CompE BS degrees earned at similar institutions while producing just over one-fourth of the CompE BS degrees earned by African Americans at those same institutions. It is notable that for six of these high-producing public doctoral institutions the average number of CompE BS degrees earned by African Americans was three or less across programs that were producing an average of 127 CompE BS degrees per year. Further, among the twenty-five public doctoral institutions producing the largest number of CompE BS graduates, four had African American CompE BS degree fractions of 1.5% or less. 

Table 3 Highest African American CompE BS Degree Fractions at Public Doctoral Institutions with CompE PhD Programs (2013-2017)

Summary

There has been little or no progress in increasing the fraction of CompEs who are African Americans. Progress will likely only take place through a concerted effort by industry, professional societies, academia and government to foster change, including stronger efforts in graduate degrees. CompE undergraduate programs does quite poorly compared to many other engineering disciplines in the context of gender diversity and slightly better than engineering overall in the fraction of African Americans earning undergraduate degrees. Many of the largest CompE programs in the US are strikingly behind the national averages for degrees earned by African Americans.

2019 Data Update for Computer Engineering BS Degrees

I wanted to provide an update since the 2019 degree data is available. The figure above is for data reported to ASEE for all engineering programs that reported. Further data is available from ASEE, including an annual summary report on the 2019 data from ASEE's Department of Institutional Research & Analytics.

^Florida A&M and Florida State have a joint engineering college. Florida A&M is a HBCU.

*Prairie View A&M data was obtained from their public institutional research pages at https://www.pvamu.edu/ir/program-review-dashboards/.

NOTE: The data was updated due to a systematic error in data for one year on 7/12,2018. All of the data and opinions are solely my personal responsibility and not the opinions of any of the institutions for which I have previously or currently serve. I am happy to correct or clarify the data or listen to perspectives that would result in updates or improvements. I encourage sharing and discussing this with colleagues and feel free to send me your perspectives and opinions so that we all can work on the challenge shown here, together. ?2018 Keith J Bowman