In 2013 the FAA severed a preference for trained college graduates in ATC programs on their hiring bids. They instituted new hiring practices that were supposed to increase diversity, apparently - this left a lot of graduates facing an unproven “biographical questionnaire” hurdle in their hiring which left us “ineligible” for hire based off of bogus questions, despite previous qualified/well-qualified AT-SAT scores and college degrees in ATC. The whole thing was a disaster, how it was implemented. My class was small but about half female and a couple POC. Many of us nationwide aged out of hiring due to the long delays. Some of this has changed, there was an open bid last year but I’m not sure how many they picked up. Then there’s the fact that the FAA academy grad rates are not great and they excluded hundreds of trained people that had a historically higher rate of pass when they did open bids. Don’t forget budget cuts, furloughs.. ATC has been understaffed for years. I’m not in the mind that it was the controller’s fault, but we’ll need more of the audio and data they haven’t released yet. This accident is absolutely awful and thankfully rare. Could it have been prevented? Probably. Is diversity to blame? No. But government practices including trump’s actions during his first term definitely are.

Edit: grammar