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Thursday, May 21, 2009

Report on selection of majors in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)

We are releasing today our new report Cultivating STEM: Why West Michigan college students select majors in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The Van Andel Education Institute sponsored our fall 2008 survey of West Michigan college juniors at four local schools. 888 students participated. Key findings in the report include:

1. Despite a lot of talk about a shortage of qualified graduates in STEM fields, the best recent evidence is for lack of demand for graduates, not lack of supply. Survey data confirms that students are concerned about job availability and potential earnings, though these are secondary to perceived natural gifts and the opportunity to improve the lives of others. Attracting more majors to these fields will require attention to demand-side considerations like increasing employment opportunities and improving salaries for STEM workers.
2. Majors in the health professions differ markedly from the rest of students in the factors they are most likely to report as influences on their major selection. They are far more likely to cite an opportunity to improve the lives of others, as well as more likely to cite demand-side matters like job availability and potential earnings.
3. Significant numbers of students say they "seriously considered" a STEM-related major--enough to increase STEM enrollment more than 20 percent, had they been recruited. The vast majority of these students did not abandon STEM because it was uninteresting or too hard (though these are common rationales); rather, STEM simply lost the competition with other fields that were more attractive or interesting.

Click "READ MORE" below to see a sample chart, or just download the free PDF, which includes comprehensive navigation tools for online reading. To request a full-color, bound copy, please contact CSR at 616 526-7799 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

To illustrate the second key finding above, here is a detail of the top five influences on major choice, taken from Figure 2 on page 13 of the report:

The most cited factor was “Your area of natural gifts”; students’ self-perceptions are the most common conscious correlates of their chosen field of study—except for Health Professions majors. The green crosses on this dot plot show that Health Professions majors were most likely to cite their “opportunity to improve the lives of others;” this unique, apparent altruism is coupled with a stronger explicit acknowledgment of self-interestedness as well, as they were also much more likely to cite job availability and earnings.

 

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