| Adam Maltese
University of Virginia
The effect of school experiences on long-term student persistence in STEM
FINAL REPORT
While the number of Bachelor's degrees awarded annually has nearly tripled over the past 40 years (NSF, 2008), the same cannot be said for degrees in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields, where the data reveal that in 2005 the relative percentages of students earning degrees in nearly all STEM fields were at, or below, previous levels. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that by the year 2014 the combination of new positions and retirements will lead to 197,000 openings in the life and physical sciences, 507,000 engineering positions, and over 1.3 million jobs in computers and mathematics (BLS, 2005). Given these circumstances, the main research questions I sought to answer with this study were: (1) What are the most common enrollment patterns for students who enter into and exit from the STEM pipeline during high school and college? and (2) Controlling for differences in student background and early interest in STEM careers, what are the high school science and mathematics classroom experiences that characterize student completion of a college major in STEM?
To evaluate the factors that lead to students' entry and persistence in the STEM pipeline, a large-scale longitudinal assessment of science education was needed. With records for a few thousand students who participated in all rounds of data collection, NELS:88 offers one of the largest and most comprehensive sets of information concerning students' school experiences and outcomes for the critical period between 8th grade and entry into the workforce. A review of the literature indicated that logistic regression would provide the best way to evaluate the association between various factors (e.g., demographics, educational experiences, achievement) and categorical outcome measures. Approximately 4700 students with high school and college transcript records and who participated in all five survey rounds were included in the analysis.
The first question this research sought to answer involved the common entry and exit points in the STEM pipeline in high school and college. The results of the descriptive analysis demonstrated that most students who went on to complete significant college coursework in STEM completed at least three or four years of STEM courses during high school, and a greater proportion of those who completed majors in STEM enrolled in the advanced mathematics and science courses offered during high school.
The second goal of this research was to investigate the relationships between various predictors and the outcome of completing a major in STEM. At almost every pipeline checkpoint indicators of the level of coursework and achievement were significant in predicting student completion of a STEM degree. As the models progressed, more recent enrollment and achievement predictors became significant at the expense of similar variables from earlier rounds. The most significant finding is that measures of student interest and engagement in science and mathematics were significant in predicting completion of a STEM degree, above and beyond the effects of course enrollment and performance. The results also support previous research that showed demographic variables have little effect on persistence once the sample is limited to those who have the intrinsic ability and desire to complete a college degree.
A final analysis, which involved the comparison of descriptive statistics for students who switched into and out of the STEM pipeline during high school, suggested that attitudes toward mathematics and science play a major role in choices regarding pipeline persistence.
These results suggest that policymakers concerned with STEM workforce development may benefit from redirecting the current focus on student achievement to initiatives aimed at increasing student interest and engagement in STEM.
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