Top students spurning STEM fields

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For years, educators have heard dire warnings about a supposed decline in the number of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates from U.S. colleges and universities, and the effect this could have on the nation's global competitiveness. Now, a new study suggests the problem might be different in nature than originally assumed. Findings indicate that retention along the STEM pipeline remained strong, and even increased, from the 1970s to the late 1990s. The overall trend of increasingly strong STEM retention rates, however, is accompanied by simultaneous and sometimes sharp declines in retention among the highest performing students in the 1990s.


Top students spurning STEM fields Steady as She Goes? Three Generations of Students through the Science and Engineering Pipeline (Read the report)