STEM attrition among high-performing college students: Scope and potential causes

Abstract

Postsecondary educaton plays a critcal role in building a strong workforce in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematcs (STEM) felds. The U.S. postsecondary educaton system, however, frequently loses many potental STEM graduates through atriton. An increasing porton of STEM leavers are top performers who might have made valuable additons to the STEM workforce had they stayed in STEM felds. Using data from the 2004/09 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:04/09), this study tracks a cohort of U.S. beginning bachelor's degree students over 6 years, providing a close look at STEM atriton among a group of high-performing college students. Capitalizing on the transcript data collected through BPS:04/09, this study also examines STEM coursetaking, detailing how partcipaton and performance in undergraduate STEM coursework are associated with students' departure from STEM felds. The study fnds that about a quarter of high-performing beginning bachelor's degree students entered STEM felds (i.e., declared a STEM major) during their enrollment between 2003 and 2009, and about a third of these entrants had lef STEM felds by spring 2009. The results of multnomial probit regression analysis indicate that students' intensity of STEM coursework in the frst year and their performance in STEM courses may have played an important role in their decisions to switch majors out of STEM felds.

Relationship of Mathematics Self-efficacy and Competence with Behaviors and Attitudes of Engineering Students with Poor Mathematics Preparation

“…Understanding how to keep students in their engineering degree programs is of importance to engineering educators around the globe (Chen & Soldner, 2013). The lack of adequate mathematics background for some students who want to become engineers is a great challenge (Kokkelenberg & Sinha, 2010).…”

The Need for Measuring Transformative Experiences in Engineering Education

“…We know this through studies such as the seminal "Talking about Leaving" 9 , which documented attrition rates for science, math, and engineering majors across seven four-year institutions of higher education and reported its findings in chapters with names including "The Weed-Out Process" and "The Unsupportive Culture." Since that time, various other studies have documented similar struggles of students who choose to leave STEM majors 3,14,15 . Whether we work to correct this through improved pedagogy or shifts in cultural climate, or both, raising retention rates within our programs would obviously create more engineering graduates.…”

“…Even when students can make the necessary connections, some find they are uninterested in doing so [1][2][3] . It is difficult, at times, to tell the difference between the students who cannot use, in the real world, the skills they have gained in school and those who can, but choose not to.…”

“…Many studies document the "leaky pipeline," and strive to understand the reasons students leave STEM programs during their undergraduate years 3,[9][10][11][12] . These attrition studies frequently reveal that women and under-represented minorities leave in numbers disproportionate to their presence in the programs 9,13 .…”

“…One answer might be that those who leave STEM degree programs are incapable or unprepared B , but the data do not support this as the sole cause. While many students do leave because of lower academic performance, many do not 3 . One study discovered that women who leave STEM programs have the same GPAs as women who stay 13 , and another found that women who leave have higher GPAs than the men who remain 9 .…”