STEM Students Finding Majors Too Hard

Students majoring in science, technology, engineering and math have higher rates of attrition than any other subject, so are they just too hard?

Over the past few years test scores have shown that American students are consistently behind their counterparts in countries like Finland and Singapore. President Obama and industry groups have called on colleges to graduate 10,000 more engineers a year and 100,000 new teachers with majors in STEM — science, technology, engineering and math – to try and bridge the gap, writes Christopher Drew at the New York Times.

There are encouraging signs, with surveys showing the number of college freshmen interested in majoring in a STEM field is on the rise. However, after middle and high school the excitement quickly fades as students brush up against the reality of what David E. Goldberg, an emeritus engineering professor, calls “the math-science death march.”

Studies have found that roughly 40 percent of students planning engineering and science majors end up switching to other subjects or dropping out completely. This number shoots up to 60 percent with pre-medical students. This is twice the combined attrition rate of all other majors.

And for educators, the key question is how to keep the momentum created in the lower grades from dissipating once the students get to college.

“We’re losing an alarming proportion of our nation’s science talent once the students get to college,” says Mitchell J. Chang, an education professor at U.C.L.A. who has studied the matter.

“It’s not just a K-12 preparation issue.”

Professor Chang says the attrition rate can be higher at the most selective schools, where he believes the competition overwhelms even well-qualified students.

“You’d like to think that since these institutions are getting the best students, the students who go there would have the best chances to succeed,” says Chang.

“But if you take two students who have the same high school grade-point average and SAT scores, and you put one in a highly selective school like Berkeley and the other in a school with lower average scores like Cal State, that Berkeley student is at least 13 percent less likely than the one at Cal State to finish a STEM degree.”

Ben Ost, a doctoral student at Cornell, found in a study that STEM students are both “pulled away” by high grades in their courses in other fields and “pushed out” by lower grades in their majors.

In September, the Association of American Universities, which represents 61 of the largest research institutions, announced a five-year initiative to encourage faculty members in the STEM fields to use more interactive teaching techniques.

“There is a long way to go,” says Hunter R. Rawlings, the association’s president, “and there is an urgent need to accelerate the process of reform.”

No one doubts that students need a strong theoretical foundation. But what frustrates education experts is how long it has taken for most schools to make changes, writes Drew.

Comments

Mark Peters

November 12, 2011 at 6:30 am

The transfer rate out of STEM classes was similar 40 years ago. Why is there this sudden surprise? Perhaps, the university administrators could work on reversing the grade inflation in non-STEM classes.

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STEM Students Finding Majors Too Hard | International Education News | Renascence School International | Panama City | private preschool, elementary school, middle school

November 12, 2011 at 8:10 am

[...] students are consistently behind their counterparts in countries like Finland and Singapore.”(more) Comments (0) Go to main news [...]

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Doug

November 12, 2011 at 3:39 pm

Why would anybody want to be a STEM teacher when STEM grads can all make more in almost any other field.

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Brencis

November 12, 2011 at 5:03 pm

High school math courses (including Calculus) are dominated by simple algorithmic learning and memorisation. When students are required to actually reason mathematically they find it a big shock.

Lower level college math courses try to cover too much content and don’t develop sufficient deductive argument and connections between ideas.

The biggest problem – it’s so engrained in the culture and has also become a political football you can actually no longer solve the problem.

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A teacher

November 15, 2011 at 5:51 am

Since my grades and ambition are in the toilet I went to
my Guidence Department. They suggested I take higher
level courses such as stem. Great I’m in.

Wait a minute you really don’t expect me to come to school
more than twice a week I hope. Wait a minute you mean
I actually have to do some work?? I’m getting my parents
to come in here, scream and threaten everyone, and
insist that I get all A’s. You better do it if you know what’s good for you.

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A student at a top 20 university

December 3, 2011 at 11:12 am

Is it a surprise? As an applied mathematics major and premed, I seen the disparity of grading first hand. Humanities and the arts simply have no grading system-you show up to class and it is an A. Sadly, it is the opposite for the STEM classes, professors are more focused on the grading distribution rather than allowing the students to learn. Many STEM professors find it unusual to issue out more than 2 As in a class of 25 students. Regardless, it is fair to say that the majority of nonSTEM majors has no applicability in the job market. Do you see doctors or engineers protesting at Occupy Wall Street? No,but you do see English PhDs…

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