Reducing the Loss of Community College Students who Demonstrate Potential in STEM

Peter Riley Bahr (), Jon McNaughtan and Grant R. Jackson
Additional contact information
Peter Riley Bahr: University of Michigan
Jon McNaughtan: Texas Tech University
Grant R. Jackson: Texas Tech University

Research in Higher Education, 2023, vol. 64, issue 5, No 3, 675-704

Abstract: Abstract Community colleges serve nearly half of all undergraduates, including a disproportionate share of African American and Hispanic students, and are a key point of access to higher education for students who face socioeconomic disadvantages or other obstacles to participation in higher education. Community colleges stand to play a pivotal role in strengthening the nation’s workforce and increasing opportunity in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. However, a troublingly large fraction of community college students who complete advanced STEM courses ultimately leave college without postsecondary credentials. Utilizing data from the California Community College system, we investigated four hypothesized explanations for why students who have demonstrated potential to succeed in STEM fields by completing an advanced course in math, chemistry, or physics did not complete college. We found that students who left college tended to enter the STEM curriculum at lower levels of skills, struggled in non-STEM coursework, and did not take or were unable to pass STEM courses in other fields. They also were more likely to be White and more likely to be male. We conclude with recommendations for institutional policy and practice and for future research.

Keywords: Community college; STEM; Success; Completion; Graduation; Transfer; Persistence; Attrition; Calculus; Math; Chemistry; Physics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11162-022-09713-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:reihed:v:64:y:2023:i:5:d:10.1007_s11162-022-09713-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11162

DOI: 10.1007/s11162-022-09713-8

Access Statistics for this article

Research in Higher Education is currently edited by Robert K. Toutkoushian

More articles in Research in Higher Education from Springer, Association for Institutional Research
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().