STEM
Women and Minorities in Math and Science Programs: The Numbers Don’t Add Up
C
asey George-Jackson, an adjunct faculty member in the College of Education at the University of Illinois, says more women and minorities are being educated in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields than prior studies have indicated, if a broader view is taken of these disciplines.
George-Jackson’s study, conducted at the University of Illinois, suggests that the U.S. may not be falling as far behind its industrialized peers in educating future generations
of scientists as previously
thought. Significantly more female and mi- nority college students are majoring in and obtaining degrees in STEM—science, technology, engineering and math—than previously believed.
Previous studies on differential partici-
pation rates in STEM emphasized female and minority underrepresentation by focus- ing on a single major or a narrow set of high-profile STEM majors such as com- puter science and engineering. Broadening the definition of STEM to encompass related disciplines such as the health sciences, the agricultural and bio- logical sciences and psychology—which
tend to attract and retain more women and minority students—more accurately re- flects the number of college students in science-related
degree programs, said
Casey E. George-Jackson, a researcher and adjunct faculty member in the College of Education at the University of Illinois, who studied student participation and bache- lor’s degree completion rates in STEM fields at five public research universities. The data that George-Jackson used in the study were collected by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for its Public Univer- sity Database project, which examined trends at U.S. colleges and universities. Public research universities educate about 7.2 million students, or 30 percent of the undergraduate population and confer two- thirds of the degrees awarded in STEM fields.
George-Jackson tracked more than
16,000 freshmen that matriculated to five land-grant universities in fall 1999 and completed bachelor’s degrees within six years, the rates at which students declared STEM majors and their persistence in those disciplines. “I had access to majors semester by se-
mester instead of having just the major stu- dents entered with or graduated with,” George-Jackson said. “I could see move- ment semester by semester, and that’s im- portant because otherwise we wouldn’t be able to look at the nuanced differences. The data set also gave me the ability to look at the intersection of race and gender.” If the fields classified as STEM were
limited to physical science, computer sci- ence, math and engineering, the disciplines commonly defined as STEM in previous studies, 42 percent of men and 11 percent of women in George-Jackson’s study could be classified as STEM majors. However, when using the broader view of STEM fields, the ratios changed significantly—37 percent of women and 54 percent of men were studying STEM disciplines, George- Jackson found.
36 HISPANIC NETWORK MAGAZINE Celebrating 19 Years of Diversity
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