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Title: An Overview of Quantum Information Science Courses at US Institutions
As the field of Quantum Information Science (QIS) continues to advance, there is an increased need for a quantum-smart workforce to address the needs of the growing quantum industry. As institutions begin to expand their course offerings, there is a unique opportunity for discipline-based education researchers to have an impact on the curricular and pedagogical choices being made in these courses. As a first step, it is necessary for education researchers to have a representative picture of what QIS education currently looks like. We reviewed recent course catalogues from a large sample of institutions in the United States looking for courses focused on QIS content. Our conservative analysis reveals that roughly a quarter of the institutions we reviewed offer QIS courses. While encouraging for such an emerging field, we found disparities in the types of institutions offering these courses as the vast majority were Doctoral-granting institutions. Additionally, we found that some classifications of minority serving institutions were much less likely to offer a QIS course (for example Historically Black Colleges and Universities or Predominantly Black Institutions), while Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander serving institutions were more likely than the national average to offer a QIS course. These disparities may lead to further racial, socioeconomic, and geographic disparity in the future quantum workforce. We also found that there was no single department that offered a majority of the QIS courses, indicating that the best efforts to improve QIS education will need to consider the multi-disciplinary nature of the field of quantum information science.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2012147 2011958
NSF-PAR ID:
10349587
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Editor(s):
Bennett, M.; Frank, B.; Vieyra, R.
Date Published:
Journal Name:
2021 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings
Page Range / eLocation ID:
93 to 98
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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