There has been a growing body of work investigating student persistence in STEM. STEM graduates, it is both one of the most challenging obstacles and a necessary first step on the way to a STEM career. While calculus is not the only hurdle faced by potential U.S. Introductory math courses, such as Calculus I, have repeatedly been linked to students’ decisions to leave STEM majors. In the United States and elsewhere, first-year college and university mathematics courses often function as a bottleneck, preventing large numbers of students from pursuing a STEM career.
Similar projections have been made in the United Kingdom.
The report also argues that simply increasing the retention of STEM majors by 10% would make considerable progress towards meeting this need.
President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) report predicts over the next decade approximately one million more STEM graduates above and beyond the current graduation level will be needed in order to meet the demands of the U.S. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.Īcross the world there is tremendous need for more workers with degrees in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM). CR was part of the research team that received this funding. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: All data are located within the paper and its Supporting Information files.įunding: This work is part of the Characteristics of Successful Programs in College Calculus (CSPCC) project, National Science Foundation Directorate for Education & Human Resources, Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings #0910240 ( ). Received: OctoAccepted: Published: July 13, 2016Ĭopyright: © 2016 Ellis et al. While it would be ideal to increase interest and participation of women in STEM at all stages of their careers, our findings indicate that if women persisted in STEM at the same rate as men starting in Calculus I, the number of women entering the STEM workforce would increase by 75%.Ĭitation: Ellis J, Fosdick BK, Rasmussen C (2016) Women 1.5 Times More Likely to Leave STEM Pipeline after Calculus Compared to Men: Lack of Mathematical Confidence a Potential Culprit. This suggests a lack of mathematical confidence, rather than a lack of mathematically ability, may be responsible for the high departure rate of women. When comparing women and men with above-average mathematical abilities and preparedness, we find women start and end the term with significantly lower mathematical confidence than men. Furthermore, women report they do not understand the course material well enough to continue significantly more often than men. Our analyses show that, while controlling for academic preparedness, career intentions, and instruction, the odds of a woman being dissuaded from continuing in calculus is 1.5 times greater than that for a man. The data come from a unique, national survey focused on mainstream college calculus. We examine the characteristics of students who begin college interested in STEM and either persist or switch out of the calculus sequence after taking Calculus I, and hence either continue to pursue a STEM major or are dissuaded from STEM disciplines. Calculus is a necessary step in this pathway and has been shown to often dissuade people from pursuing STEM fields.
The substantial gender gap in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce can be traced back to the underrepresentation of women at various milestones in the career pathway.
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