Stem attrition among high-performing college students in the United States: Scope and potential causes

Abstract

Postsecondary educaton plays a critcal role in building a strong workforce in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematcs (STEM) fields. The U.S. postsecondary educaton system, however, frequently loses many potental STEM graduates through atriton. An increasing porton of STEM leavers are top performers who might have made valuable additons to the STEM workforce had they stayed in STEM fields. Using data from the 2004/09 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:04/09), this study tracks a cohort of U.S. beginning bachelor's degree students over 6 years, providing a close look at STEM atriton among a group of high-performing college students. Capitalizing on the transcript data collected through BPS:04/09, this study also examines STEM coursetaking, detailing how partcipaton and performance in undergraduate STEM coursework are associated with students' departure from STEM fields. The study fnds that about a quarter of high-performing beginning bachelor's degree students entered STEM fields (i.e., declared a STEM major) during their enrollment between 2003 and 2009, and about a third of these entrants had lef STEM fields by spring 2009. The results of multnomial probit regression analysis indicate that students' intensity of STEM coursework in the frst year and their performance in STEM courses may have played an important role in their decisions to switch majors out of STEM fields.