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A study by Huy Le, associate professor of management at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), has identified factors that could lead more young students to successful careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields.
"People seek out the environment that fits their personal characteristics," Le said. "If they work in an arena that suits them, they'll be happy and successful. With these predictors, we can identify students with potential for obtaining a STEM degree nearly a decade before they pursue it."
Le also found no difference between the abilities of girls and boys to succeed in STEM, based on these two predictors. Essentially, if a girl and a boy have the same amount of interest and ability to succeed, they are each entirely capable of doing so.
"There are many theories about the social pressure that keeps women out of STEM," he said. "We found that young men in general were more interested in the field, but considering that young women showed the same ability in our study, that seems to suggest that the dearth of women in the field is probably due to societal factors."
Le notes that many students, especially women, who excel cognitively also have excellent verbal ability and will often choose a career other than STEM because they have so many opportunities before them. Le says that educators and counselors can influence those decisions by simply introducing students to the benefits of a career in science or engineering.
"This is a critical issue in our economy right now," he said. "We have a crippling deficit of participants in the STEM field, and if we can encourage our students to pursue this path, we'll be on our way to eradicating [the issue]."
The full report, Building the STEM pipeline: Findings of a 9-year longitudinal research project (pdf), is available at Research Gate.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 15 2016, @05:39PM
Having been in a STEM career for 17 years (21 if you include the PhD), you have to recognize the perks.
You can change countries fairly easily.
Visas are fairly easy to come by.
Your colleagues will speak English.
You can often work flexible hours.
The downsides are short term contracts that can leave you finished mid-career. and leaving the field for 5 years (e.g. to shit out a brat) is likely also the end. Until you get to quite a high status, your university won't have any interest in hanging on to you.
It's possilbe that high ability women can see this and don't sign up. Men are much more into the macho heroic sacrifice thing.