Federal Data and NSBE’s Mission, Part 2

Last October, we talked with NSBE National Advisor Virginia Booth Womack about recent federal diversity, equity and inclusion data policy changes and what those changes might mean for NSBE’s mission. Part of the conversation: mass layoffs at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in early 2025, and the lack of recent NCES numbers for degree attainment by Black Engineers. 

So what’s new, and what’s not, at NCES now? 

One important “not” is the agency’s table titled “Bachelor’s Degrees Conferred by Postsecondary Institutions, by Race/Ethnicity and Field of Study.” This vital resource has long assisted NSBE by quantifying our progress in “increasing the number” of Black engineering graduates in the U.S. But when we checked the NCES Digest of Education Statistics website for the trusty table in fall 2025, the latest version posted contained data for the 2020–2021 and 2021–2022 academic years. Our recent search just before publication, six months later, yielded the same result. 

We’ll keep checking. In the meantime, two recent articles by Inside Higher Ed have pointed to a major restructuring in the works for NCES: 

“ED Releases Recommendations to Reimagine IES,” March 2, 2026 

“Group Formed to Recommend Changes to Battered NCES,” March 19, 2026 

Stay tuned.