Students who are pursuing a degree in science-related fields are dropping out or switching their major at increasing numbers, according to the University of California at Los Angeles.
According to the study students majoring in STEM fields are dropping or switching out of their respective majors.
The data indicated that about 40 percent of students enrolled as STEM major switched subjects or failed to get a degree. This trend has also begun to occur at N.C. State, where about 40 percent of the student body is enrolled as STEM majors.
According to data that was published by N.C. State University Planning and Analysis, 11 percent of freshman students who entered into the College of Engineering in 2009 had withdrawn by their second year.
11 percent of students who entered into the College of Life & Agricultural Sciences had also withdrawn by their second year. In addition, nearly 18 percent of students who entered into the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences had withdrawn by their second year.
According Jim Martin, a chemistry professor at N.C. State, the reason why STEM majors tend to drop out or change their major is because students who enjoyed science in high school do not realize that at a higher education science is “completely different.”
Martin also said, “[Many students] went into science because it was this sort of very well defined, methodical thing and then you get into the actual, more professional practice of it and find the complexity, the question, and the problem solving nature, it comes as a shock and that’s why it becomes difficult.”
Professor Jeff Braden, the Dean of College of Humanities and Social Sciences, said that class difficulty alone does not necessarily explain why students in STEM fields often switch majors.
“Many of the students change from engineering to humanities and social sciences, or to the college of sciences, say department of biology for example, because they decide they might well be able to do the work, but they don’t particularly like it as much as they like the passion for writing and reading,” Braden said.
According to the New York Times, difficult classes in STEM majors often discourage students from pursuing their degree and make it difficult for students to develop an affinity for their classes.
In order to improve the way these STEM classes are being taught Martin said that tools such as Webassign often push students away from developing real scientific skills.
“The process of the scientist is largely struggling through failure to try to figure out what’s going on,” Martin said. “Again it’s not really that there is the right answer, but what your standardized education, your instant feedback tends to do is develop guessers, develop what I call recognition based learners, rather than people who are willing to struggle with the problem and think about it.”
