Evaluating the Causal Effects of the Amazon Future Engineer Scholarship Program

High schools and colleges across the country increasingly offer courses in computer science and engineering, but first-generation students, low-income students, and students from historically underrepresented communities are much less likely to pursue and complete degrees in these fields. This disparity in choice of college majors has been linked to differences in prior academic preparation, and has in turn left its mark on the composition of America’s workforce (Arcidiacono et al., 2012; Thompson, 2021; Tran et al., 2023).

This document reports findings from an evaluation of the Amazon Future Engineer Scholarship Program (AFE), an initiative designed to encourage students to explore computer science and expose them to related career opportunities.