Pursuit of STEM: Factors Influencing Minority Student Entrance and Persistence
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32674/jump.v8i1.6476Keywords:
STEM, minority students, higher educationAbstract
Continual underrepresentation of racial/ethnic and female students in STEM has spurred research on the factors that inhibit and support their entrance and persistence in the field. Although informative, prior studies are limited by their focus on undergraduate students and by their tendency to examine the isolated, rather than interactive, effects of individual-, interpersonal-, institutional-, and societal-level factors. Thus, this study relies on interview data from 18 minority and/or female graduate students in STEM to explore how individual-, interpersonal-, institutional-, and societal-level factors interact with one another to influence the students’ STEM entrance and persistence. Findings suggest there are important interactive effects, but they differ for STEM entrance and STEM persistence. Implications for racial/ethnic diversity and female representation in STEM are discussed.
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