IIB 
117TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. R. 204 
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 
MAY 19, 2021 
Received; read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, 
Labor, and Pensions 
AN ACT 
To direct the Director of the Office of Science and Tech-
nology Policy to carry out programs and activities to 
ensure that Federal science agencies and institutions of 
higher education receiving Federal research and develop-
ment funding are fully engaging their entire talent pool, 
and for other purposes. 
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Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE; TABLE OF CONTENTS; FINDINGS. 
(a) SHORT TITLE.—This Act may be cited as the 
‘‘STEM Opportunities Act’’. 
(b) TABLE OF CONTENTS.—The table of contents for 
this Act is as follows: 
Sec. 1. Short title; table of contents; findings. 
Sec. 2. Purposes. 
Sec. 3. Federal science agency policies for caregivers. 
Sec. 4. Collection and reporting of data on Federal research grants. 
Sec. 5. Policies for review of Federal research grants. 
Sec. 6. Collection of data on demographics of faculty. 
Sec. 7. Cultural and institutional barriers to expanding the academic and Fed-
eral STEM workforce. 
Sec. 8. Research and dissemination at the National Science Foundation. 
Sec. 9. Research and related activities to expand STEM opportunities. 
Sec. 10. Tribal Colleges and Universities Program. 
Sec. 11. Report to Congress. 
Sec. 12. Merit review. 
Sec. 13. Determination of budgetary effects. 
Sec. 14. Definitions. 
(c) FINDINGS.—The Congress finds the following: 
(1) Many reports over the past decade have 
found that it is critical to our Nation’s economic 
leadership and global competitiveness that the 
United States educates and trains more scientists 
and engineers. 
(2) Research shows that women and minorities 
who are interested in STEM careers are dispropor-
tionately lost at nearly every educational transition 
and at every career milestone. 
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(3) The National Center for Science and Engi-
neering Statistics at the National Science Founda-
tion collects, compiles, analyzes, and publishes data 
on the demographics of STEM degrees and STEM 
jobs in the United States. 
(4) Women now earn nearly 37 percent of all 
STEM bachelor’s degrees, but major variations per-
sist among fields. In 2017, women earned only 20 
percent of all bachelor’s degrees awarded in engi-
neering and 19 percent of bachelor’s degrees award-
ed in computer sciences. Based on Bureau of Labor 
Statistics data, jobs in computing occupations are 
expected to account for nearly 60 percent of the pro-
jected annual growth of newly created STEM job 
openings from 2016 to 2026. 
(5) In 2017, underrepresented minority groups 
comprised 39 percent of the college-age population 
of the United States, but only 18 percent of stu-
dents who earned bachelor’s degrees in STEM fields. 
The Higher Education Research Institute at the 
University of California, Los Angeles, found that, 
while freshmen from underrepresented minority 
groups express an interest in pursuing a STEM un-
dergraduate degree at the same rate as all other 
freshmen, only 22.1 percent of Latino students, 18.4 
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percent of African-American students, and 18.8 per-
cent of Native American students studying in STEM 
fields complete their degree within 5 years, com-
pared to approximately 33 percent of White students 
and 42 percent of Asian students who complete their 
degree within 5 years. 
(6) In some STEM fields, including the com-
puter sciences, women persist at about the same rate 
through doctorate degrees. In other STEM fields, 
women persist through doctorate degrees at a lower 
rate. In mathematics, women earn just 26 percent of 
doctorate degrees compared with 42 percent of un-
dergraduate degrees. Overall, women earned 38 per-
cent of STEM doctorate degrees in 2016. The rate 
of minority students earning STEM doctorate de-
grees in physics is 9 percent, compared with 15 per-
cent for bachelor’s degree. Students from underrep-
resented minority groups accounted for only 11.5 
percent of STEM doctorate degrees awarded in 
2016. 
(7) The representation of women in STEM 
drops significantly from the doctorate degree level to 
the faculty level. Overall, women hold only 26 per-
cent of all tenured and tenure-track positions and 27 
percent of full professor positions in STEM fields in 
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our Nation’s universities and 4-year colleges. Black 
and Hispanic faculty together hold about 6.8 percent 
of all tenured and tenure-track positions and 7.5 
percent of full professor positions. Many of the num-
bers in the American Indian or Alaskan Native and 
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander cat-
egories for different faculty ranks were too small for 
the National Science Foundation to report publicly 
without potentially compromising confidential infor-
mation about the individuals being surveyed. 
(8) The representation of women is especially 
low at our Nation’s top research universities. Even 
in the biological sciences, in which women now earn 
more than 50 percent of the doctorates and passed 
the 25 percent level 37 years ago, women make up 
only 25 percent of the full professors at the approxi-
mately 100 most research-intensive universities in 
the United States. In the physical sciences and 
mathematics, women make up only 11 percent of full 
professors, in computer sciences only 10 percent, 
and across engineering fields only 7 percent. The 
data suggest that approximately 6 percent of all ten-
ure-track STEM faculty members at the most re-
search-intensive universities are from underrep-
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resented minority groups, but in some fields the 
numbers are too small to report publicly. 
(9) By 2050, underrepresented minorities will 
comprise 52 percent of the college-age population of 
the United States. If the percentage of female stu-
dents and students from underrepresented minority 
groups earning bachelor’s degrees in STEM fields 
does not significantly increase, the United States 
will face an acute shortfall in the overall number of 
students who earn degrees in STEM fields just as 
United States companies are increasingly seeking 
students with those skills. With this impending 
shortfall, the United States will almost certainly lose 
its competitive edge in the 21st century global econ-
omy. 
(10) According to a 2014 Association for 
Women in Science survey of over 4,000 scientists 
across the globe, 70 percent of whom were men, 
STEM researchers face significant challenges in 
work-life integration. Researchers in the United 
States were among the most likely to experience a 
conflict between work and their personal life at least 
weekly. One-third of researchers surveyed said that 
ensuring good work-life integration has negatively 
impacted their careers, and, of researchers intending 
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