America’s Secret Weapon for Global Competitiveness is Diverse Tech Talent in the “Last Mile”
In news that is no longer shocking, by 2026, the U.S. will suffer a projected deficit of 1.2 million software engineers, a workforce critical to fueling innovation and maintaining global competitiveness. What should make headlines now is the addressability of that gap through what is, hands down, the largest and most immediately accessible pool of untapped tech talent in the U.S.: striving, low-income college students already in the last mile of earning a technical degree.
In seeking answers to the talent and diversity crises in tech, look no further than socio-economic status. The role it plays in student success and where that success tends to plummet in a low-income student’s collegiate timeline shows a clear view of the solution. Even more compelling is just how light the lift is to change the tide for this high potential pool of technical students — and America’s innovation pipeline deficit.
If you take one thing from this commentary, let it be the economic and competitive potential of this proverbial low-hanging fruit.
An Abundance Of Talent In The Last Mile
Hundreds of millions of dollars are invested annually in “STEMspiration” efforts designed to expose, engage, and enlist more U.S. students — especially those from underrepresented groups — into technical career pathways.
It works! Enrollment in computing-related degree programs has surged since 2016. Guess the number of college students who meet all of these criteria:
women
in the U.S.
in the final two years of an undergraduate degree in computer science or engineering
with a family income under $51,500 a year (at or below 200% of poverty).
It’s 76,000. And that’s a narrow slice of a college student pie growing bigger and more diverse by the day.
Excellent! Let’s sit back and watch those tech grads roll in! Wrong. An overwhelming majority of those 76,000 women won’t graduate. In fact, 80% of college students from the bottom two income quartiles won’t earn a degree within six years.
It turns out the students most likely to earn technical degrees are those who can afford them.
The wealthiest students receive 34% more non-federal financial aid annually than the poorest.
Computer science claims the highest drop-out rate of any degree program.
With financial struggles being the top cause of dropping out and family obligations a close second, low-income students are especially vulnerable.
These facts should give us pause. It takes, we estimate, about $477,000 of public and private investment to get a STEM college student to their junior year. Moreover, this represents a massive loss for the tech industry and society writ large in terms of our talent, the diverse perspectives it would have brought to innovation, and the economic contributions it would have made. We’ve estimated that closing the graduation gap for 23,000 aspiring software engineers will yield $2.15 billion in wages over ten years.
This light lift offers a rapid return on investment (ROI), too. The cost of supporting a low-income student toward the finish line (referred to as a “completion grant”) is mind-blowingly trivial. Between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars is the difference between adding a qualified worker to the tech workforce or not.
A New Approach For A New Population
Carolann Mora illustrates the opportunity we’re missing. She attended a tech event at her community college “for the food” and left with a sparked interest in computing. Last Mile Education Fund's investment later helped Carolann finish her degree in computer science — after she’d attended school part-time while working full-time for eight years. Had we encountered her earlier, she could have jump-started her current high-earning job as a software engineer at an investment bank, while filling our tech gap, in half that time.
For every one of the thousands of striving tech student success stories like Carolann’s, a hundred don’t make it across the finish line. No degree, no tech career. But now, with educational debt.
These are the stories we address at Last Mile, supporting the students behind them in small but life-changing, industry-shifting ways. In the U.S., low-income students are encouraged to pursue college pathways in STEM with the promise of opportunity and social mobility. But we fail to address the assumptions of privilege and affluence embedded in the fabric of the U.S. higher education experience.
Last Mile takes a new approach to getting low-income students to graduation day within that structure:
Adopting an abundance mindset around low-income students and their potential.
Rooting out institutional barriers that disproportionately limit them.
Offering safety net and basic needs funding quickly and with no questions asked.
It’s taken a 20+ year investment in “STEMspiration” to encourage and support more young people entering the pipeline. To make good on that promise and realize the diversity, talent, economic, and innovation gains we aim for, we must apply equal emphasis on getting students out the other side.
About the Author:
Ruthe Farmer is the founder and CEO of Last Mile Education Fund. She previously served as chief evangelist at CSforAll, was senior policy advisor for tech inclusion in the Obama White House, and chief strategy and growth officer at the National Center for Women & IT. She is a Schmidt Futures Innovation Fellow, Anthem Awards Gold Medalist, ABIE Award Winner for Social Impact, and a White House Champion of Change. She holds a BA from Lewis & Clark College and an MBA with a focus in social entrepreneurship from the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School.