Inequities in Minority Engineer Education

In the light of the purported efforts by educators and university administrators to recruit, admit, finance, and educate American minority engineers, inequities in graduate engineering education continue to exist in the United States. An excuse that is often given to minority persons for the lack of special programs is that funding is not available, which is nevertheless precluded by the entrance requirements. Ironically the same schools are able to provide support for foreign nationals with state and Federal funds. Statistics show that foreign nationals comprise greater than 25% of the graduate enrollment, while American minority engineers make up less than 1% of the total. In the United States of 90,344 graduate and undergraduate engineering students in 104 schools surveyed, 131 students or 0.00145% were Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican faculty representation in the same schools is zero.