Over the past year, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and RTI International have engaged in a study of Black and Hispanic individuals who have achieved PhD degrees in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields. Only 3.8% of people who earned these doctoral degrees from 2010–20 were Black Americans. The debt load of those who did is disproportionately high.
Throughout the report, “Exploring the Educational Experiences of Black and Hispanic PhDs in STEM,” it is clear that Black, and to some extent Hispanic, students have very different experiences than their white and Asian counterparts. The differences begin with the types of institutions they attend for their undergraduate educations and continue with the institutions at which they do their doctoral studies.
The U.S. population is 12% Black and 19% Hispanic, but in 2021 only 5% of PhDs in STEM fields were earned by Black individuals and 8% by Hispanic individuals. Understanding that there is a national imperative to diversify the STEM workforce, the Sloan Foundation found it essential to identify possible barriers so that they could be addressed.
Four research questions were developed. These explore the characteristics of bachelor’s degree-granting institutions attended by STEM PhD recipients, the characteristics of doctoral-degree institutions attended by STEM PhD recipients, the postsecondary educational pathways and experiences of STEM PhDs and how they vary by recipients’ race and ethnicity, and the sources of support received and debt incurred.
Dr. Erin Dunlop Velez
Sixty-six percent of white students and 65% of Asian students earned their bachelor’s degrees at institutions that offered doctoral degrees as compared to 56% of Black students. Black students were more likely to graduate from institutions at which the highest degree offered was a master’s degree. Half of the top 20 bachelor’s degrees of Black STEM PhD recipients from 2010–20 were earned at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Eleven of top 20 schools for Hispanic STEM PhD recipients were Hispanic Serving Institutions.
“If you look at Black students who get STEM PhDs, so many of them start at HBCUs. It goes back to the support that they have,” said Dr. Erin Dunlop Velez, director of educational research at RTI International and one of the report’s authors.
