Students of color are still at a disadvantage in the STEM industry—but many are “paving their own path” and teaching themselves to code.

Students of color are still at a disadvantage in the STEM industry—but many are “paving their own path” and teaching themselves to code. According to NerdWallet, the average in-person and online coding boot camp is thousands of dollars. The families of some students of color can’t afford the costs, which has led them to not receive the support they need to pursue computer engineering or other careers in the STEM field. Now, some are taking matters into their own hands: Stanford University student Devin Green, who was inspired to get into STEM after watching The Avengers and Iron Man, is developing his own app. To educate himself, he downloaded manuals off iBooks, Googled questions he had, scrolled through Reddit for answers and tips, and watched as many YouTube tutorials on programming languages as he could. Meanwhile, 15-year-old Abinaya Dinesh, who has already built an app and runs the Girls in AI nonprofit, used Khan Academy and Coursera to teach herself data science and computer programming. YPulse’s Self-Taught trend research found that a quarter of 13-39-year-old BIPOC consumers have researched computer skills in their free time. (In The Know)