In this foreword, Shirley Malcom and Lindsey Malcom speak to the history and current status of women of color in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics(STEM) fields. As the author of the seminal report The Double Bind: The Price of Being a Minority Woman in Science, Shirley Malcom is uniquely poised to give us an insightful perspective on the development of this field over the last thirty-five years. She has spent the intervening years working on increasing diversity and inclusion in STEM education and careers. Her daughter, Lindsey Malcom, represents the next generation of scholars seeking to understand and advance the representation of women of color in STEM. Together, they connect the past and the present regarding the pathways used by minority women entering STEM, their patterns of advancement,and shifting paradigms on how best to support women of color in these fields.
While student loans provide college opportunity for many, undergraduate student debt resulting from typical and heavy borrowing hinders future investments in human capital. Propensity score matching analysis of the NSF’s 2003 National Survey of Recent College Graduates demonstrates that debt negatively affects the graduate school enrollment of bachelor’s degree holders in STEM fields, where debt is measured by a student’s cumulative undergraduate debt relative to the mean debt of his or her baccalaureate graduating cohort. The findings support recent changes in financial aid policy that seek to reduce undergraduate borrowing by increasing means-tested grant aid.
With the majority of Latinos attending community colleges, it is important to understand ways in which these institutions contribute to the production of Latina/o STEM degree holders. This chapter discusses implications from a study of institutional pathways traversed by Latina/o STEM baccalaureates.
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