In the movie The Graduate an inebriated businessman whispered “Plastics” to a fleckless recent college graduate. The young man was encouraged to enter that burgeoning field. It wasn’t bad advice. We can go one better: our enticing word is STEM. By all accounts, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics careers offer ever expanding opportunities.

Hispanics are terribly underrepresented in all these fields. They and other under-served groups represent 26 percent of the population; nonetheless, only 10 percent of Hispanics major in science or engineering.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that education is mobilized to offer more STEM programs nationwide.

Why? More than a decade ago, it was obvious the United States had fallen behind in these fields. President George H. Bush and Congress agreed to encourage and fund STEM education. Millions of dollars have been allocated to address our nation’s shortcomings.

As a result, STEM opportunities will outpace non-STEM opportunities for decades.  STEM compensation will continue to outmatch other occupations. In the future, millions of well-paying professional STEM jobs will be available.  In fact, many vacancies exist today, and no, you don’t need a Ph.D. to qualify. Many STEM positions only require two-year Associate degrees offered at community colleges nationwide. Those classes are frequently offered in the evening and on weekends.

Start early

To ensure that more Hispanics are trained in these fields, we need to start with Hispanic children. In many cases, they are unaware of available opportunities or timid to pursue them even if they are aware. Creative pathways are being developed to change this.

One example is the University of Southern California’s “Draw a Scientist Program”, which helps elementary school children consider science careers. In an article in The Conversation, Dr. Dieuwertie J. Kast of the University of Southern California describes how this program explored children’s perceptions of what scientists look like. Children were asked to draw a picture of scientists: “Ninety percent drew white men in laboratory coats, often looking like Albert Einstein. Ten percent of the students did not know what a scientist was or did.”

A yearlong orientation program introduced these children to professional scientists representing many races, who visited schools and interacted with students. Later students were asked to draw a picture of a scientist. Forty percent drew white female scientists, six percent drew scientists of color, male and female, and six percent drew themselves as a scientist.  Still, half of them, forty-eight percent, portrayed scientists as Caucasian men.

After completing the program, students drew pictures of scientists again. This time, thirty-seven percent of them drew Caucasian women, ten percent drew scientists of color and nine percent drew themselves. Caucasian men fell to forty percent, down from ninety percent at the beginning of the program.

The lessons learned are obvious and encouraging. Among them is that children can be motivated to see themselves as STEM professionals, and careers that seem alien can be demystified.

Higher education realities

Richard Fry from the Pew Foundation recently reported on the nation’s progress in producing STEM professionals. It is not encouraging: although many opportunities to study STEM fields exist, Hispanics continue to lag nationwide.

Federal employment and education data show Hispanic adults are less likely to earn degrees in STEM than other degree fields. Thus, Hispanics continue to represent a lower share of STEM graduates among the adult population, and they are very poorly represented in STEM professions: they make up 17 percent of total employment across all occupations, but just 8 percent of all STEM workers. Since 2016, Hispanics in STEM professions have increased by only a shocking one percent.

There have been many academic successes among women, who now earn a majority of all undergraduate and advanced degrees. Hispanic women in particular graduate at a higher percentage than Hispanic men at all levels of education -- high school through post-doctoral programs, which is admirable. Nonetheless, female Hispanics remain poorly represented in STEM fields overall, and particularly in fields such as engineering and computer science.

On the brighter side, many Hispanic women are employed in the health professions, from MDs to laboratory technicians. New opportunities blossom every year, and being bilingual is a marked advantage for securing employment at many institutions.

Goldie Blumenstyk, a long time Chronicle of Higher Education specialist, writes bluntly that “too many graduates don’t get a crack at tech careers. Colleges could change that.” She suggests colleges embrace the wakeup call and assist minorities by encouraging them to pursue STEM careers. Blumenstyk recommends that colleges be more proactive in recruiting under-represented students, and provide focused teaching programs to include internships with technology companies.

The future: preparing Hispanics for growing STEM employment opportunities

A very recent update from the Bureau of Labor Statistics notes shifts due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It reveals strong gains in jobs related to research and development in engineering, life sciences and health. Epidemiologists, medical scientists, biochemists and biophysicists, biological technicians and registered nurses all are experiencing exceptional growth. Professor Beth Jameson from Seton Hall University has studied the expanding role of school nurses, and concludes that many more are needed nationwide.

Telecommuting work opportunities increased dramatically during the pandemic. It also created more jobs in computer-related occupations, including software development. It is believed those trends will continue.

The bottom line is that well-paying STEM employment opportunities will flourish for decades.

The bulk of the job gains in STEM occupations (1.7 million) are projected to occur in two STEM categories: nearly one million net new jobs are projected among healthcare practitioners and technicians, and approximately 600,000 among computer workers.

Too few Hispanics are preparing for these opportunities. For more to do so they must be encouraged at an early age to envision themselves as fully capable and worthy of succeeding in those fields. High schools and colleges should prepare new programs to encourage Hispanic participation.

Many colleges now provide flexible education opportunities for working adults.

Financial packets have been redesigned to provide enough support so that students do not over burden themselves with loans.

We cannot be complacent. Neither is it the time to be pessimistic: the glass is half full not half empty.