A private-sector commitment of more than $300 million to fund K-12 STEM education programs was announced by presidential adviser Ivanka Trump Tuesday at an event in Detroit.
The funding from multiple major technology companies will be added to $200 million in Education Department grants the Trump administration earmarked Monday for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) instruction.
Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook Tuesday pledged $50 million each to the nationwide effort, with Lockheed Martin adding $25 million, Accenture more than $10 million, General Motors and Pluralsight $10 million each, and private individuals and foundations $3 million.
Detroit-based Quicken Loans promised to provide the financial resources needed to provide computer science training for the more than 15,000 students in the Detroit public school system.
The goal of the five-year investment is to expand the number of students in the computer science education pipeline and close the skills gap for computing jobs, according to the Internet Association, a trade group that represents leading global internet companies on matters of public policy.
Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson said it will take millions of lines of code to direct a spaceship to Mars, and if Americans are to land on the red planet by 2023, “it’s going to be because of computer sciences, and we want to get our youth involved in that,” Click on Detroit reported.
The memorandum President Trump signed Monday directs Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to prioritize funding for STEM programs that encourage women and minorities to learn coding and other computer skills, with an emphasis on early education.
During a panel discussion in Detroit Tuesday, Ivanka Trump said there is a major diversity problem in the technology industry, and that “collectively, we need to come together and solve that,” the Detroit Free Press reported.
She cited statistics that the percentage of women in the computer science workforce actually declined from 35.3 percent in 1990 to 22.2 percent in 2016, although women represent 47 percent of the overall U.S. workforce
"We have to do better. We’re going to do better," she said, noting that computer education was a “priority for the administration as we think about pathways to jobs."
Based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, LinkedIn reported that there will be 1 million more computer science-based jobs in the next 10 years than there are people qualified to fill them, resulting in a potential loss of $500 billion in salaries.
