Do introductory courses disproportionately drive minoritized students out of STEM pathways?

ABSTRACT: Diversifying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) requires a critical examination of institutional structures at every educational level. In higher education, performance in core introductory courses required for STEM degrees is strongly associated with degree completion. Leveraging a multi-institutional database, we examine nearly 110,000 student records from six large, public, research-intensive universities in order to assess whether these introductory courses disproportionately weed out underrepresented minority (URM) students. We find that the association between low performance in an introductory STEM class and failure to obtain a STEM degree is stronger for URM students than for other students, even after controlling for academic preparation in high school and in

SUBMITTER: Hatfield N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9802213 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature