– Students with relatively greater non-STEM ability are more likely to switch out of STEM.
– Black and Hispanic students are more likely to persist in STEM after ability is taken into account.
– The authors find evidence of switching behavior that appears motivated by a preference for
graduation within four years.
– Students with relatively higher non-STEM ability are more likely to graduate because they are more likely to switch to a non-STEM major.
– Minority students have a stronger preference for STEM majors relative to non-STEM majors.
– Conditional on being admitted as a STEM major, minority students are less likely to graduate with a non-STEM major and more likely to not complete any major within four years.
– Minority students are less likely to leave STEM.
– Controlling for unobserved ability significantly reduces but does not completely eliminate the STEM graduation gap between minority and non-minority students.
– Household income influences both a student’s budget constraint during college as well as their relative preferences for graduating as a STEM major versus other majors.
– With more time to complete their major, there is a smaller gap in major retention between minority
and non-minority students.
– Engineering in particular has very high retention rates for all students.
– Black and Hispanic students are more likely to persist in STEM after ability is taken into account. Authors also ?nd evidence of switching behavior that appears motivated by a preference for graduation within four years.
2016 - Decomposing the Racial Gap in STEM Major Attrition: A Course-Level Investigation
The data consists of the registrar records for all undergraduate students who matriculated at a large, selective public university between 1980 and 2005. After limiting the sample to STEM majors only, the sample consisted of 3,191 students.
The authors classify engineering, life sciences, and physical majors as STEM, and humanities and social Science majors as non-STEM. They use the term minority to refer to under-represented minorities (Black and Hispanic students) and non-minority to refer to White and Asian students.
IV: all courses taken (including year, term, meeting times, and grades), declared major every quarter, gender, race, high school grade point average, zip code of last school attended (used to approximate household income), performance on standardized exams (including SAT math and verbal scores), STEM ability, non-STEM ability, peer effects (average STEM and non-STEM ability)
DV: graduation or dropping out, STEM or non-STEM degree, time taken to graduate