Interest Not Problem for Underrepresented Groups in S&T

African-American and Hispanic students begin college interested in majoring in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields at rates similar to those of white and Asian-American students and persist in these fields through their third year of study, but do not earn their bachelor’s degrees at the same rate as their peers, according to a new analysis conducted by the American Council on Education (ACE).

Increasing the Success of Minority Students in Science and Technology also finds that the majority of the African-American and Hispanic students majoring in STEM fields who persisted beyond the third year did not drop out, but were still enrolled and working toward a degree after six years.

The report relies on data from a longitudinal study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, which tracked 12,000 undergraduates who entered college in the fall of 1995.

ACE's analysis found that in the 1995-96 academic year 18.6 percent of African-American students and 22.7 percent of Hispanic students began college interested in majoring in STEM fields, compared with 18 percent of white students and 26.4 percent of Asian-American students. By the spring of 1998, students in each racial/ethnic group continued to study STEM fields at nearly the same rates (56 percent of African-Americans and Hispanics, 57 percent of whites and Asian-Americans). By the spring of 2001, 62.5 percent of African-Americans and Hispanics majoring in STEM fields attained a bachelor’s degree, compared with 94.8 percent of Asian-Americans and 86.7 percent of whites.

Although persistence rates of African-American and Hispanic students majoring in STEM fields were below the overall persistence rates for these students in all fields, a statistical analysis showed that majoring in STEM fields did not affect student persistence. Instead, the variables strongly related to persistence for all students, regardless of major or race/ethnicity, were full-time attendance, hours worked while enrolled and rigor of high school curriculum.

The ACE analysis identified a number of key differences between students who earned a bachelor’s degree by spring 2001 in a STEM field and those who did not:

• Completers were better prepared for postsecondary education because a larger percentage took a highly rigorous high school curriculum.
• Nearly all completers were younger than 19 when they entered college in 1995-96 compared with 83.9 percent of non-completers.
• Completers were more likely to have at least one parent with a bachelor’s degree or higher.
• Completers came from families with higher incomes.
• Non-completers were more likely to work 15 hours or more a week.

Increasing the Success of Minority Students in Science and Technology is available for $22 (plus shipping and handling) at: http://www.acenet.edu

Links to this paper and more than 3,000 additional TBED-related research reports, strategic plans and other papers can be found at the Tech-based Economic Development (TBED) Resource Center, jointly developed by the Technology Administration and SSTI, at http://www.tbedresourcecenter.org/.