Why Do So Many College Science Majors Drop Out? 841
Hugh Pickens writes "Christopher Drew writes that President Obama and industry groups have called on colleges to graduate 10,000 more engineers a year and 100,000 new teachers with majors in science, technology, engineering and math but studies find that roughly 40 percent of students planning engineering and science majors end up switching to other subjects or failing to get any degree — 60 percent when pre-medical students are included. Middle and high school students are having most of the fun, building their erector sets and dropping eggs into water to test the first law of motion, but the excitement quickly fades as students brush up against the reality of what David E. Goldberg calls 'the math-science death march' as freshmen in college wade through a blizzard of calculus, physics and chemistry in lecture halls with hundreds of other students where many wash out. 'Treating the freshman year as a "sink or swim" experience and accepting attrition as inevitable,' says a report by the National Academy of Engineering, 'is both unfair to students and wasteful of resources and faculty time.' But help is on the way. In September, the Association of American Universities announced a five-year initiative to encourage faculty members in the STEM fields to use more interactive teaching techniques (PDF)."
Because so many more enter college these days? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Because so many more enter college these days? (Score:2, Insightful)
No, it's gone up greatly in the last few decades because it's becoming harder and harder to draw a living wage without a degree. Even jobs that don't require a degree are increasingly likely to have a degree listed as a requirement.
As for math, in my experience, one of the problems is that people who teach math at the college level have either a masters or PhD in math, and often times forget that they aren't educating people who are necessarily good at seeing the things the same way that the prof does. I myself have noticed that after years of tutoring math that I'm starting to just see that there's something wrong with a problem, without having to do the math.
Then there's the problem of profs assuming that things were covered in previous classes which weren't covered. When I got back to math, I had to very quickly memorize a huge number of math facts that I hadn't been expected to memorize, which put me at a distinct disadvantage to most of the other students whose teachers had expected them to memorize them.
Pretty simple explanation... (Score:5, Insightful)
...because STEM majors are so much more demanding than others. In addition to having heavier workloads, everything builds on everything else - if you fall behind, or don't master a particular fundamental like calculus or kinematics or chemical bonding, you're fucked. If you're getting a degree in English, and you don't master Blake, it's not going to have any impact on your study of Wordsworth, unless your thesis is a comparison of the two.
Employment outlook? (Score:5, Insightful)
the excitement quickly fades as students brush up against the reality of what David E. Goldberg calls 'the math-science death march'
What a load of B.S.
The problem is jobs... there aren't any in this country for non-H1B holders. Its very much like the market for French Literature, 1% of the graduates will get $100K/yr professorship jobs, the rest.... will not have a positive outcome.
Would a degree in Physics have been fun for four years? Sure. Would living in permanent unemployable poverty be fun for the next sixty years? Not so much. I'd rather see my kids being rich enough to own shoes, or not depending on food stamps for my next meal.
If you're going to end up with an "unemployable" degree, why the heck not get one in something more fun, with more women, better parties, less homework...
I encourage my kids to avoid STEM fields because they do not live in China or India. Why go into a field the government is actively trying to destroy? It would be like encouraging my kids to go into automotive assembly line work or textiles or manufacturing consumer goods or ...
(Note there is absolutely nothing wrong with STEM as a hobby.. nuke-eng or chem would be a tough hobby, but my son likes computers, and theres nothing wrong with IT/CS as a hobby, as long as he has some other plan, one that involves making money)
Re:High school doesn't prepare you for college (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly my high school didlittle to prepare me for actuallysurviving college. In high school I could sleep through most classes and get A and B on everything but handwriting.
We need to separate out students and challenge them all. Different people learn in different ways. Our system only teaches in one way
Re:Because so many more enter college these days? (Score:3, Insightful)
Then there's the problem of profs assuming that things were covered in previous classes which weren't covered. When I got back to math, I had to very quickly memorize a huge number of math facts that I hadn't been expected to memorize, which put me at a distinct disadvantage to most of the other students whose teachers had expected them to memorize them.
This is college. If you are not prepared for a class it is *your* responsibility to fill in the gaps in your knowledge. It is *your* job to learn. It is *not* the professor's job to hold your hand as though you were an infant. The sole job of the professor is to point you to the important information in the field and gauge how much you are learning. If you can't handle that, maybe you're not cut out to go to college.
Cooling out. (Score:3, Insightful)
The US does not need more engineers. Salaries aren't going up. This has been discussed before on Slashdot.
As for attrition, that's by design. The classic paper is "The Cooling-Out Process in Higher Education": "The cooling-out process in higher education is one whereby systematic discrepancy between aspiration and avenue is covered over and stress for the individual and system is minimized. The provision of readily available alternative achievements in itself is an important device for alleviating the stress of consequent failure and so preventing anomic and deviant behavior. The general result of cooling-out processes is that society can continue to encourage maximum effort without major disturbance from unfulfilled promises and expectations."
"Cooling out" in this context comes from a criminal term, "cooling out the mark": keeping the victim of a con game from coming back with cops or a baseball bat. It's not about being cool.
The alternative is tougher admission standards. If you can get into MIT, you have a 91% chance of coming out with a degree. Cal Poly, 40%.
One alternative is better vocational education. In the US, that's a dirty word, because all kids should go to college. In Germany, it works. German makes it hard to fire people. As a result, there's an incentive to train and retrain existing employees. Germany also has a functional apprenticeship system.
Re:High school doesn't prepare you for college (Score:5, Insightful)
But I'm not blaming students, I'm blaming the curriculum and instruction methods in high schools. High school math classes don't have enough time to teach the material. Every high school math class I was in dedicated the first half of the class to going over homework sets (generally 10-40 problems of varying complexity) which takes away from instructional time. Many math classes ran out of time so if you wanted to get the last 10 minutes of the lesson you had to stay after class (how exactly is this supposed to work in a world where your next class starts in 6 minutes, unlike college where you might have 2 hours to your next class). I went to 3 different high schools in 2 different states, and this was a general theme everywhere.
I've also done 2 years of physics, at 2 different high schools, and those were well taught classes that had time to cover their material. They didn't go over homework at the start of class. In fact, one of my teachers didn't actually grade the homework, just strongly advised doing it. There was an extremely strong relationship between doing the homework and passing, and everyone figured that out very quickly. Even though the homework wasn't graded, everyone who cared about the class still completed it.
Re:Employment outlook? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Theory (Score:5, Insightful)
College is where you move from practical, demonstrable stuff to abstract theoretical stuff, like Newton's laws of motion to quantum mechanics,etc
While that's true, a lot of students wash out before reaching quantum or similar topics. I'd say the problem is more that college is where you move from qualitative descriptions of physical processes (i.e. the calculus-free physics courses so popular in high school today) to quantitative descriptions, that demand you to actually know the math and do the work.
We've dumbed down high school too much already. The article's solution of dumbing down college to match would be disastrous.
Need to model science after sports. (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the emphasis on sports in high school and college. And no one is talking much about the "attrition" rate where high school / college athletes don't make pro.
How about a science program with the same model?
Kids are identified in high school and they take extra classes after school and in the summer so that when they do get to college they've already completed the 1st year classes in their last year of high school.
With scholarships pretty much guaranteed for the kids in the program.
Re:...stuff they see on the Science Channel. (Score:5, Insightful)
Crab fishing? Ice road trucking? Paranormal investigation?
Governments do not want a critically thinking populace. Just suck up the bullshit they, the bought dogs of the corporate states of America, want you to think and believe.
Science and math require a solid foundation in the basics. With a solid foundation, politicians, corporate thugs and banksters cannot sway the public. Bread and circuses brought down the Roman Empire in approximately 200 years. This country is next.
Re:Need to model science after sports. (Score:5, Insightful)
One of my friends is working on a doctorate in high energy particle physics at LSU. Their labs are critically underfunded, and they've been laying off technicians. It's at the point where a lot of experiments are forced to use substandard materials because they lack the resources to do things right. But hey, they beat the Crimson Tide yesterday, so it's all worth it, right?
Re:High school doesn't prepare you for college (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it's high school's fault. The problem lies in the fact that doing well in those types of courses requires a certain type of analytic thinking that is simply not that intuitive for most people.
I graduated with a bachelors of science from an engineering focused university. I like math and science and use both in my work daily. The problem I saw was that the introductory classes were treated specifically as a way to weed out some of the students with mindless busywork. First year chemistry was an entire year of several hundred students in a giant lecture hall memorizing the periodic table, memorizing ion charges, and (in short) doing nothing at all relating to science or the type of problem solving or analytical thought actually needed to be a competent scientist. Something like half the people who took those chemistry classes switched to another major or dropped out, but I seriously doubt there was a strong correlation with those that would be good at science.
The introductory math classes were little better with huge classes where you were supposed to memorize formulas and methodologies and then apply them, with lots of minor mistakes, on paper. The only use they had was helping students learn a good balance of speed versus meticulousness. At least in introductory computer science you actually did some programming and did some of the nuts and bolts work of making a computer work for you. In general, however, it felt like teachers with no interest doing as little work as possible by forcing a lot of rote memorization for no real purpose other than to weed out students so there were more manageable class sizes going forward. It was as though all the advances in educational theory and methodology over the last 100 years were intentionally ignored.
Re:...stuff they see on the Science Channel. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a fan of the man, but I agree with this:
When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth.
-- Steve Jobs
Oldest myth in the book (Score:2, Insightful)
Blaming lack of employment on immigrants is just about the oldest and most pernicious trick in the book. What you're not mentioning is that someone willing to survive a tougher education system than the US's, learn a new language, and fly half way around the world to a land of people utterly hostile towards them--just to find work--is probably also going to be a more productive and better-motivated employee than someone who just breezes through the US education system and expects to be fellated by a harem of employers at the end. This is still a country where you can get a job based on merit, believe it or not, and to tell your kids or anyone else that it's the immigrants' fault is not doing them a service at all.
Opposite. (Score:4, Insightful)
The student isn't paid to learn, the teacher is paid to teach. You have it backwards.
Re:More Teachers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? There are vast numbers of qualified, unemployed teachers in every state. When districts are actively laying off teachers and have been for many years, the only thing more teaching degrees would cause is more unemployed teachers
Its actually worse than that. My sister in law is roughly the youngest employee of her school district. The union contract enforces that, more or less, no one is employed between the ages of 22 and roughly 40. As they downsize (and age !!) the lower bound goes up due to seniority/experience/union membership rules. Dumping a big cohort of new 22 year old teachers doesn't mean the odds of all unemployed teachers overall drop from 20% to 10%, it means the lower bound of age increases until quite possibly, the 22 year old grad won't have an open teaching slot until approximately retirement age !!!
Note that this depends on local area. If you're a teachers union member and willing to work in "must wear bullet proof vest" neighborhood, the have a shortage of teachers, but if you want a nice neighborhood, then its gonna be tough not to get bumped out of your slot unless you have gray hair. Which brings up a secondary effect, that all the STEM parents in the nice suburban STEM neighborhoods want their kids to grow up and become little STEM-lets, but union rules mean all the new young teachers will end up in the meth and crack neighborhoods, which are not exactly noted as hotbeds of STEM activity or blind faith in STEM positive outcomes.
Which leads to a third level effect that if 20 years of teachers union membership is required to reach a STEM-positive environment, no one can transfer into the program... By the time I'd graduate with the required Ed degree, add 20 more years, and I'd be past retirement before I'd ever get to apply my "STEM" skills in a STEM-positive environment.
Preparation, not incentives (Score:5, Insightful)
People drop out because the subjects are hard, sure. Making them fun won't make them less hard, so that won't address the problem.
No, students do not drop subject just because they are hard. They drop them because they are hard AND they have never been academically challenged ever before. I've seen this happen numerous times with smart first year students. They are completely used to coasting through school with one cylinder firing because there is no challenge at all for them. Then, when they get to university, they are suddenly faced with material that they cannot master with a quick read through and they literally do not know how to cope.
If we challenge even the brightest students at the school level then they will be used to having to think things through carefully and then, when they do finally understand it, they will get the sense of achievement which comes with that. Some of my colleagues who have a reputation for teaching very challenging, senior undergrad courses have some of the best student feedback because, by that point, the students like to be challenged and to succeed. Sadly though we lose a lot of students before we get there just because they are completely unprepared for university and don't know how to cope.
Re:Incentives, not challenge (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:...stuff they see on the Science Channel. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's easy to explain - most engineers could be working on something they find incredibly exciting but to an outsider, he looks no different than someone typing a letter to his grandmother in Word.
People want visible, palpable drama and action. Engineer work looks incredibly boring to a layman.
Sure, TV shows pick up anything and crank it up to 11 in order to make a routine job seem like a hero task. But they need something to work on.
Even for lawyers, cops and doctors, only a few types are shown; you won't see a show about tax lawyers, cops writing tickets or dermatologists.
Re:Incentives, not challenge (Score:5, Insightful)
Engineers and scientists are underpaid and overworked as it is.
Adding more of them to the labor market will make these problems worse.
Worse, for who? Not for companies.
"We don't have enough engineers" is largely just an excuse for allowing corporations to get exemptions to immigration laws and import indentured servants in technical fields. US schools have produced plenty of engineers. Most of them aren't in engineering.
46 year old. Ivy League EE undergrad. Neither me nor any of my friends in undergrad spent more than 7 years as engineers. A couple jumped to business school in undergrad. After spending a couple years working, a couple went to business school, and a one went for a MSEE, and I went for a PhD in EE. MSEE worked for 5 years after graduation then went back for MBA. I worked in engineering 5 years after PhD, then moved to business IT analysis/proj mgmnt.
The opportunities in engineering were lacking. The opportunities in business were better. There are plenty of engineers. There aren't great opportunities for them.
Re:Opposite. (Score:5, Insightful)
The professor is paid to present the information; the student pays for the opportunity to learn from an expert. As a student, it is your responsibility to study until you understand the material. University is about taking personal initiative in learning what the professors say is important. And while some of them are poor teachers, all professors were at one time undergraduates, and thus they tend to have a good idea about what you need to understand to be a master of a subject.
If you expect a professor to stuff your head with information without any effort on your part, then you do not understand how the learning process works. If you pay for a gym membership and personal instructor and then never do the exercises regularly and properly, you have no justification to whine that you didn't get your money's worth when you're still out of shape. Suck it up, and take initiative.
Re:Bizarre (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is there such emphasis on university degrees in the job market? I understood that employers liked to hire university grads for certain jobs because employes knew these people could learn things on their own, enjoyed learning, and in general wanted to do a good work. I later realized that a university education had class implications and employers often want employees from certain social classes. But there is nothing wrong with vocational school, training courses, or even learning on the job. Why try to pump a quarter of your population through the university system when the needs of many of the students (and their future employers,) would be as well or better served by other avenues of learning?
Signaling. A college degree tels an employer you are trainable and have the drive to slog it out through four years of college. It doesn't make you any smarter or more capable than someone else; but it does make the selection prices easier for an employer. Hence, a college degree becomes an entry requirement.
That carries through to the graduate level as well - a top student at a non-top ten business school is every bit as bright and capable as a counter part at a top 10 school (and probably smarter than the bottom half at a top school); but lacks the "pedigree" and so faces a tougher job market. Smart companies realize they can hire the top grads at a lesser known school for less money.