for reminding us why we should care about what women choose for their majors and careers. George Will’s WPost column today about the scarcity of science talent in the U.S. gets at one aspect of the issue I raised in this prior post.

Will’s column slams U.S. immigration policy for sending home many foreign born PhD-earners who could be fueling tech growth in this country. Writes Will: Two-thirds of doctoral candidates in science and engineering in U.S. universities are foreign-born.

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Given the changing gender demographics on college campuses, with women soon to make up 60% of those earning bachelor’s degrees, the issue of why fewer women choose math/engineering/science majors, stick with those majors through graduation and then pursue long careers in those areas, now matters a lot to the economy, as I laid out in this previous post. Eduwonkette then challenged the numbers, arguing that women are making progress in taking on science majors.

Of course they are, as the graphic that accompanied one of my editorials linked in that post illustrated. That modest progress, however, seems outstripped by the rapidity of the campus gender trends. Look at what happened to engineering majors in California public universities when those systems swung toward two-thirds female grads.

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