At last, They admit there are Tech era problems especially with minorities.

[Igel]

1. What "at last"?

This is the latest in 30+ years of this kind of reporting.

By the time I was in college in the late '70s and early '80s there were minority-specific programs, sending STEM-folk of color out to schools so that minority kids could see STEM-folk with their skin color and summer programs trying to get minority kids into summer STEM programs at numerous colleges. (No, they weren't called "STEM" at the time.)

There were parallel ones for girls. Some of those still exist.

At post-secondary schools there are, or used to be, special programs.

Too much to go into here, but a lot of things work against these kids' getting the background in secondary education necessary for decent work at post-sec schools. We focus on very few of the factors, just those that we like to think we control. Those few factors we control for 35 hours a week, 38 weeks. But the other factors are more important, imposed by friends and family and media that they think are friendly to them 70 hours a week or more, 52 weeks out of the year.

And yet we insist on focusing on a small cause rather than taking on larger causes.