Facebook and McKinsey & Company are coming together to launch TechPrep, which happens to be the tech goliath’s new initiative to provide a wide range of expedients like games, tutorials, and videos for parents in order to help their children seek a career in computer programming fields.
Usually, TechPrep is a general expedient centre for parents, guardians, and learners who are interested in technology.
The social media giant is planning to focus over communities with a huge amount of populations of Latino and Black people. The government feels that the underrepresented minority group will make more than fifty percent of the population by the year 2050, but in the current time at every transformation step in their STEM they are unevenly lost, which includes the field like studies, careers, and computer science and programming.
Increase Diversity with TechPrep
Congress member, Eddie Bernice Johnson mentioned in a comment that, while much of the current era, which is the present and future depends on computer science & programming, they cannot bear to continue hammering so much of talent that is surrounded by them. So this initiative is a means towards working together in order to leverage respective strengths and resources to handle such critical issue in hands.
Facebook and McKinsey conducted a research study, which was all about the involvement of underrepresented minority groups in careers involving computer programming. At the end of the results, they found out that 77% of guardians or parents have no idea how to help their child seek computer programming & science degree. In a very similar manner, non-college graduate guardians and parents & lower income parents who face the similar situation of not having any idea about how to help their child seek a computer programming and science degree, the figure reaches to 83%. This is where the idea for TechPrep popped in.
“What we see around coding and programming, is that there are some communities in which, because the parents’ capacity is not there — the guardian —that we’re losing whole generations of people who could be guided into these really lucrative, engaging, satisfying careers, for most of them and for us, we really need to focus on how we build the capacity of these influencers. They are the most positive people in terms of how they view their children’s potential. And we share that belief.” Maxine Williams, Facebook Global Director of Diversity mentioned in a statement.
They feel that there is absolutely no danger while putting an effort in the growth of diverse candidate’s pipeline. The biggest problem is the lack of diversity in the fields of technology, which is greater just a pipeline issue. According to Facebook’s EEO-1 2015 report, the company hired 73 Hispanics, 36 Blacks, as compared to White people, which were 603 in strength. Rounding the whole evaluation in total, Facebook workforce comprises of 2% Black, 3% Hispanics, and with no clear surprise 55% of White employees.
Earlier Technowize reported that, according to a research data by Computer Research Association, the strength of graduates who completed their degrees in computer programming & science were 4.5% Black and Hispanic were at 6.5%. This value significantly shows the growing number of eligible candidates who belong to the underrepresented background. The question that arises after this is why aren’t they hired by Facebook or other major tech companies?
Maxine said that his company is trying to higher over 4.5%. He explained, “We’re trying to get more than the 4.5%, because when you start at 4.5%, everybody who ever got a computer science degree would have to agree to come to Facebook for our number to be at 4.5%. And that’s just not going to happen realistically.”
Facebook and McKinsey ultimately have high hopes to achieve its goal through this initiative. They plan to increase the diversity in students taking a computer science and engineering degree, with the help of TechPrep.
“We are doing short, medium and long term initiatives, So for instance, if you think about the fact that we launched our managing bias training. Bias is something that’s critical in this and it’s not a pipeline issue.” She later added, “We are doing a number of different things, but you can’t do those things and succeed if you don’t also get a more robust pipeline coming in. So it takes everything together.” William concluded.
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