Hispanic Americans earning Aerospace Engineering Degrees

Witnessing the strong presence of aerospace companies at the truly outstanding 2022?Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE)?convention in?Charlotte?this past week inspired my interest in checking out the progress for Hispanic Americans in attaining Aerospace Engineering degrees. I have previously posted on other disciplines, e.g. my own, but this is my first on aerospace. Certainly, aerospace companies hire not just Aerospace Engineers but from many fields, including computing and business disciplines. But the SHPE convention made me curious about progress for the discipline most focused on the aerospace industry. For a more scholarly perspective on participation, persistence, retention, and graduation rates in Aerospace Engineering, check out the excellent publication by?Orr et al.

The field of Aerospace Engineering (Aero) has undergone considerable growth at the Bachelor’s Degree level and the Doctoral Degree level in the last decade as shown in Figure 1 (based on ASEE.org data). The increase in degrees for those two levels are ~40% and ~30%, respectively. Master’s degrees have been relatively flat. More than 3.6% of US engineering bachelor’s (BS) degrees for 2021 were earned in Aero. In 2021 Aero produced 2.4% of US master’s (MS) degrees and 3.3% of doctoral (PhD) degrees. Our focus here is on data from institutions that report Aero degrees separately from other programs, although many aerospace programs are embedded within or allied with mechanical engineering programs.??Some that have degree names with both disciplines on them are typically counted under mechanical engineering.?

Figure 1 shows Aero degree production at the BS, MS and PhD degree levels for the past ten years.??(ASEE Data)

Overall, diversity in terms of underrepresented minorities and gender has?been disappointing in Aero compared to the progress made in some other engineering disciplines.?This post is focused on degree trends for female and male Hispanic Americans in Aero and the growth of degrees earned by Hispanic Americans compared to the overall growth in Aero degrees and all engineering degrees.

Figure 2 Female and Male Hispanic American Aero BS degrees since 2012. (ASEE Data)

Figure 2 shows Hispanic American Aero degree production for BS degrees by gender with seventy-two reporting institutions in 2021. Overall, Aero BS degrees for Hispanic Americans have more than doubled since 2012. The female fraction of Hispanic American Aero degrees is persistently ~15% and has not changed much across the past decade. Overall, the female fraction for all Aero BS degrees is about 16%, which is lower than the ~24% across all engineering disciplines. For the period shown, the fraction of Hispanic Americans earning Aero BS degrees has grown from 8.2% to about 12.7%*. There is room for improvement with Hispanic Americans comprising nearly 19% of Americans. This is particularly true considering that many aerospace companies have substantial operations in states with large Hispanic populations. I do wonder whether prospective engineering students and their families are aware of the strong interest of aerospace companies to recruit diverse employees.?

On the Data?Careful review of individual academic programs wherein I know the students and faculty suggests that the reporting of some singular demographic groups, including Hispanic Americans, may be?underreported?from a combination of personal choice when filling out forms as well as institutional practice and interpretation. The data presented?here depends on information?reported by academic institutions. It also depends on?individual?self-reports to those institutions on race and ethnicity, which can be challenging for simple data analysis?since?Hispanic Americans, like everyone, can choose whether or not to be identified by their ethnicity. They also can choose to be defined as African, Asian, Caucasian, multiple races or choose no race at all. The newer category of "Two or more races" and folks not declaring their race and/or ethnicity so?that they are "Unknown" may also reduce precision compared to some other types of data. Other smaller demographic groups used by ASEE such as Native Americans/American Indian and Pacific Islander vary considerably?year-to-year making it difficult to note any trends or make cogent conclusions except that their numbers are small. Individual states like California also collect a broader range of? data fields. Anyone attempting to report to databases on this type of data also runs into a number of other difficulties. For example, the?National Center for Education Statistics?has previously recommended recorded undocumented students as “Unknown” rather than listing them by race/ethnicity. One exception was for students declared by the Department of Homeland Security as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), who were to be listed as foreign nationals.?

Errors in presentation of the data here are entirely on me.??Any opinions expressed here are entirely my own, not my employer's. If you find errors or believe I should change something let me know! Keith J Bowman ?2022.