Beyond Student Factors: a Study of the Impact on STEM Career Attainment

摘要

Despite great institutional efforts to recruit students, including those from underrepresented groups, into the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)pipeline, the number of students choosing STEM-related careers remains low. Using data from the Educational Longitudinal Study, we estimated a two-level model of high school sophomores' choice of STEM-related careers with gender, math self-efficacy, socioeconomic status (SES), school type, and urbanicity as predictors. Our findings show that notwithstanding the obvious private school advantage for attaining a STEM career, attainment is still lower for female students with high math self-efficacy. The gender gap persists among private and public schools regardless of students' math selfefficacy level. Students are significantly more likely to choose a STEM-related career if they are male in a private school with high SES and math self-effidacy. School urbanicity is also a significant predictor for students having a STEM-related career. We discuss this study's implications and future research directions.