Lack of Black Tech Professionals Hurts U.S., Bill Gates Says

Microsoft is working with the National Society of Black Engineers and hiring and promoting African-American programmers and engineers.

By Paul McDougall
InformationWeek
November 20, 2007 04:29 PM


A recent study says that less than 10% of graduates of computer science programs in the U.S. are black -- a fact that will contribute to a shortage of technology professionals in the years ahead, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) chairman Bill Gates said.

"The United States is not turning out from any group as many of the great engineers as there will be jobs for," said Gates, who added that blacks are particularly under represented in the tech industry because high school dropout rates in the black community exceed 50%.

"That is a stunning number ... the trends are very much working against somebody in that situation," said Gates, speaking Friday at a conference hosted by the National Society of Black Engineers at Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., headquarters.

"There will be a huge number of computer science jobs created over the next ten years, and the number of people majoring in those subjects is falling short of that," said Gates.

According to a study by the National Science Foundation, fewer than 6,000 of the 52,500 computer science graduates in the U.S. in 2004 were black. "The shallow pool of skills is due, in part, to the lack of minorities being drawn into technology," said NSBE executive director Carl Mack, in a statement.

Microsoft, named by the NSBE on Tuesday as the top employer for black engineers, said it's trying to change that by partnering with NSBE and hiring and promoting African-American programmers and engineers.

The company also announced a software developer grant to the NSBE that gives its members a three-year membership in the Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance. The memberships give NSBE faculty and students access to a range of Microsoft products and technologies, including Windows Vista, SQL Server and Visual Studio.

Gates said Friday that Microsoft will continue its efforts to build a diverse workforce. "We want to get black engineers, Hispanic engineers ... everyone that we can," he said.


http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204200492

Americans are not smart enought for IT jobs. Congress keep increasing H-1B visas for IT positions and the corporatist outsourced the remaining IT jobs to China, India, and Russia.

for the H1-B Visas!:grr:

yet, there are calls for "qualified" blacks with skills. M$ uses prison labor to package their products at 19 cents per hours one wonders why would do they need H1-B visas workers?

They gave me free math tutoring in high school through a program they had at Cooper Union.

Great organization that does a lot of cool stuff. Glad to see Gates working with them, even if I still think MS is evil. :)

What do you care?

The Economic Policy Institute reviewed these bogus "scare" stats.

http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/book_grad_rates


The federal government's own data (2000) show that of black young adults 18-24 years old, only about 16% haven't completed high school. It would be great if that figure were lower, but it's hardly as dire as "OVER 50 PERCENT!"(!!1!)

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/droppub_2001/

A recent study says that less than 10% of graduates of computer science programs in the U.S. are black -- a fact that will contribute to a shortage of technology professionals in the years ahead, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) chairman Bill Gates said.

Yeah, but considering that blacks are only around 13% of population, this is not exactly a catastrophic underrepresentation. Could it be that blacks are actually making good progress going into tech fields, and that they don't need to be dragged out and subjected to a bunch of special -- and especially stigmatizing -- "concern".


Gawd... why is it that people can spew any alarmist shit about minorities, and everyone automatically buys it?