I don’t expect it will make much of a difference. It will make it easier for some of the ones who managed to stick with it until that point to stay in academia - the article also mentions the high rate of dropouts early on. What you want to get to the talent is to reduce those dropouts.

One part of that should be free education - and in case of university education, free housing and a small unconditional stipend to make sure money is not an issue.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Royal Society President Prof Sir Adrian Smith told BBC News that the low numbers of black scientists in the UK was “unacceptable”.

Dr Mark Richards, who is one of the UK’s very few senior black scientists, and who helped the Royal Society develop the scheme, said that although the number of fellowships is small, it is hoped that they will make a big difference.

Black scientists have told BBC News that they feel unsupported, overlooked for promotion, unfairly rejected for grant applications, and that they believe the UK research system is institutionally racist.

The data reveals that a greater proportion of black people are dropping out, at every stage of their scientific careers, than their white counterparts, whereas many other ethnic minority groups have lower dropout rates.

Dr Richards, who is a physicist at Imperial College, also addressed potential criticism of the scheme; that it is positive discrimination for individuals who would not get funding on the merits of their research.

Sandile Mtetwa, who is a black PhD student at Cambridge University told BBC News at the time that the RSC’s initiative would make a big difference to those thinking of leaving research.

The original article contains 816 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!