> That ratio indicates that there is some biased process leading to the ratio, and that process should be de-biased.
Or that people have different preferences?
> Presuming women and men have equal math abilities (I assume this is true) and equal desire to obtain degrees (not entirely sure; this is a very controversial topic) you would expect that an unbiased selection process would generate 50% male/female ratio.
If by that you mean that "for each degree, the percentage of the people that want to get it follows the repartition in the population", it is absolutely not true. I don't know why or what mechanism are at play here, but assuming that this is all bias seems very weird.
> Again, many assumptions and conclusions in what i just said are not absolutely certain.
I think this is a really weak reason to collect racial statistics in the first place.
> Many departments are currently realizign they play a role in systemic discrimination, and those ratios help them understand how far they are from the mean.
That's true, but you can also base yourself on things like revenu which seems to be more universal than race.
Or that people have different preferences?
> Presuming women and men have equal math abilities (I assume this is true) and equal desire to obtain degrees (not entirely sure; this is a very controversial topic) you would expect that an unbiased selection process would generate 50% male/female ratio.
If by that you mean that "for each degree, the percentage of the people that want to get it follows the repartition in the population", it is absolutely not true. I don't know why or what mechanism are at play here, but assuming that this is all bias seems very weird.
> Again, many assumptions and conclusions in what i just said are not absolutely certain.
I think this is a really weak reason to collect racial statistics in the first place.
> Many departments are currently realizign they play a role in systemic discrimination, and those ratios help them understand how far they are from the mean.
That's true, but you can also base yourself on things like revenu which seems to be more universal than race.