The University of Washington's Fuzzy CS Diversity Success Math

theodp writes: The University of Washington's Strategic Plan for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Access (DEIA) relies on "a set of objective measurements that will enable us to assess our progress." So, what might those look like? Well, for Goal O.3 "have effective pipelines for students to enter the Allen School as Ph.D. students with a focus on increasing diversity," the UW's 5-Year Strategic Plan for DEIA (PDF) specifies these 'Objective Measurements': 1. Measure the percentage of women at the Ph.D. level and, by year 5, evaluate whether the percentage is at least 40%. 2. Measure the percentage of domestic Black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaska Native, Hawaiian/Pacific Islander Ph.D students and, by year 5, evaluate whether the percentage is at least 12% (the UW-Seattle average for Ph.D. students). 3. Measure the percentage of Ph.D. students with disabilities (measured based on DRS use) and, by year 5, evaluate whether the percentage is at least 8% (the UW-Seattle average). But with an Allen School Incoming Ph.D. Class of only 54 students -- of which 63% are International -- that suggests race/ethnicity success for an incoming PhD class could be just one Black student and one Hispanic student, if my UW DEIA math is correct. Even if it falls short, at least UW attempted to publicly quantify what their overall DEI race/ethnicity goals are, which is more than what Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have done. That the UW felt compelled to break out U.S. and International students separately in an effort to facilitate more meaningful comparisons also suggests another way that the tech giants' self-reported race/ethnicity percentages and EEO-1 raw numbers for their U.S.-based tech workforce (which presumably includes International students and other visa workers) may be misleading, as well as a possible explanation for tech's puzzling diversity trends.

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