Move Over, DeVRY … - more Afro-Americans studying computer science

Black Issues in Higher Education, June 22, 2000 by Ronald Roach

HBCUs make advances in awarding technology degrees

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Last January, Ogor Onuorah's computer science education took an interesting twist when she signed up as a researcher for the Advanced Distributed Simulation Research Consortium at Florida A&M University here.

The Nigerian native says the research, which focuses on the U.S. Army's priority to develop computerized battlefield simulation systems, has stimulated her teamwork skills and exposed her to computing environments far more advanced than what she experienced in the classroom.

"The research has helped broaden my horizons. It's gotten me experience into the team building that's necessary in industry and research," says Onuorah, who expects to graduate at the end of the summer.

Onuorah is one of several dozen undergraduate computer science majors at Florida A&M University's computer information systems department who have experienced graduate-level research with senior faculty members at the school. Though Onuorah plans to work a few years before going to graduate school in business, she considers herself fortunate for taking advantage of an opportunity that is normally reserved at other universities for graduate students and undergraduates who intend to pursue advanced degrees in computer science.

It should come as no surprise that the popularity of computers and the Internet is helping to draw increasing numbers of students, such as Onuorah and her schoolmates, into computer and information science programs at American colleges and universities.

What is a surprise, is that Black colleges -- for the first time in the last several years that Black Issues has run the degree-recipient numbers -- are topping the list in the first- and second-place slots. In fact, for computer and information science baccalaureate degrees awarded to African Americans in the 1997-98 school year, historic ally Black colleges have claimed five of the top 10 spots.

During much of the 1990s, proprietary institutions, such as the DeVry Institute of Technology, had held the distinction of being the top producers of African American computer scientists with bachelor's degrees.

But a few years of grant-snagging, corporate partnerships and sound planning have led to Black colleges being at the forefront in preparing African American students for the millennium's IT explosion.

The Power of Partnerships

Among a select few historically Black institutions, the spike in computer science enrollment and graduation rates has hit conspicuously at campuses, such as Florida A&M, where schools have allied their programs with major federal research, student funding programs and corporate initiatives.

These programs, alliances and partnerships recognize that minority-serving institutions are playing a critical role in producing minority graduates for the nation's information technology business sector.

Currently, American businesses are experiencing acute shortages of highly skilled IT professionals. It is estimated that more than 300,000 professional IT jobs go unfilled annually due to a lack of qualified workers, according to IT experts.

Labor shortages in IT fields have in recent years refocused the efforts of policy-makers and industry officials to launch new recruitment and scholarship programs for students in the sciences, engineering and information technology. Even as the Republican

Congress and the Clinton administration raised the limit on skilled foreign workers allowed in the United States, they made scholarship funding available to American undergraduates to boost the number of college graduates going into IT fields.

Dr. George Campbell, the outgoing president of the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, says a recent surge in IT education by the American colleges and universities represents a bright spot for the nation's overall technology work force. He reports that while engineering programs and their enrollment have been declining since the mid-'80s, information systems and computer science programs have attracted a growing cohort of students and have pushed schools to expand their facilities since the mid-1990s.

Campbell says that U.S. undergraduate engineering degree recipients in 1985-86 stood at 70,000; in 1999, the figure had dwindled to 61,000. On the other hand, computer science degree recipients hit a peak of 42,195 in 1986 and then fell to 24,553 in 1994. Since then, bachelor's degrees earned annually in computer science have begun a steady climb according to IT experts. The Computing Research Association, an association of 180 computer science and computer engineering departments at colleges and universities, reports that member schools saw 43 percent growth in computer science bachelor's degrees earned annually between 1995-'99.

"Technology is more visible now than it's ever been [in American society] because of the Internet," Campbell says.

While many institutions anticipate that their enrollments in computer and information science programs will grow over the next several years, officials at institutions producing high numbers of minority IT graduates say their schools' success in retaining those students will increasingly depend upon the financial and academic resources available to minorities. Officials at historically Black institutions say they can successfully grow their programs and retain students if outside assistance remains available to them.