Okwaisie: STEM majors should be restructured to retain students

Micah Toll was nominated for College Entrepreneur of the Year in 2011 when he partnered with two other engineering students to create a hybrid electric-powered bicycle that would enable students to conquer the rugged terrain of Pitt’s campus. Toll, who turned 22 a year later, said he had known since he was 5 years old that mechanical engineering would be his major. Five months before his graduation, he stated that he had no plans for conventional employment and was very committed to seeing his electric bike company succeed.

As a society, we undoubtedly need people like Toll in our schools. When imaginative and innovative people pass through schools like Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering and acquire a working knowledge of in-demand STEM fields, it often results in bursts of new technology and procedures that continually make our lives easier and our work more productive.

This constant churning out of problem-solving technology is what greases the economic wheel and keeps it spinning smoothly. This is the reason why, when studies began to show that about 40 percent of college students who were planning on pursuing STEM fields when entering college were ditching the wagon, there was cause for concern.

In the fall of 2010, President Barack Obama held the first-ever White House Science Fair, at which he encouraged middle school pupils to develop a love of science. It would be the beginning of his push to promote STEM education, which included challenging colleges to graduate 10,000 more engineers a year and hire 100,000 new teachers with STEM teaching degrees.

However, away from the political sphere, many students couldn’t handle the abrupt change from happily constructing a solar system out of cardboard in high school to memorizing grueling formulas and attempting to beat the curve in college. For many reasons, numerous STEM majors find themselves switching to the humanities before their college career is over.

When some experts began to attribute the migration from STEM fields to grade inflation in the humanities, it got me squinting a bit — it seemed like an elitist and disdainful attitude.

Research does show that grades seem to be much lower in STEM fields, where definite answers are required, than in the humanities, where the indeterminate nature of test responses means most people receive at least some credit for answering questions. But the assertion that grades are being grossly inflated in the humanities and, hence, are incentivizing people to leave STEM fields is impeding the unearthing of the real cause of the migration.

The humanities require their own skill set to succeed. Just because the answers are indefinite doesn’t mean they are easy to come by or that any answer is acceptable. It is possible for a student to leave a physics class and do badly in a literature class because they can’t write.

And though, on average, grades seem to be a little lower in the STEM fields than those in the humanities, the incentivization factor for STEM majors to migrate is minimal, in my opinion, given the large number of people the numbers suggest are moving. There is some sort of existing incentive at play, but the relatively higher grades in the humanities are not the benefit causing the move, because nothing guarantees that STEM students will pass if they switch.

Perhaps the biggest incentive that is driving STEM students to leave their fields is that a discrepancy exists somewhere in the perceived payoff of such fields. On a macro level, a society benefits when people graduate with STEM degrees. But are these students convinced of the reciprocal effect? Do they feel they are being rewarded enough on a micro level for the grueling preparations it takes to get those degrees?

A 2011 CNN article showed that in that year, the average annual salaries of chemical engineers and mathematics degree holders were $63,000 and $55,000, respectively. Liberal arts majors, on average, raked in an annual average salary of $50,313. For many STEM students, such figures might inform their choice that the level of work they have to put in is not worth the stress and the palpable effort needed to get those degrees.

Although it’s easy to blame the mass exodus from STEM fields on humanities’ grade inflation, we instead need to look at how STEM courses and programs are structured. While telling elementary school students that science is fun might work temporarily, it is rarely effective in motivating college students through semesters of organic chemistry and calculus when they might enjoy writing, instead. There is an understated societal hand pushing STEM majors out of their fields, and maybe the humanities just provide a safe landing ground.

Write Daniel at dno2@pitt.edu.