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Reversing STEM’s Slide

By Wayne D'Orio

Students are avoiding math, science and engineering, just when the country’s need is most dire. Here are three ways you can reverse this trend on your campus.

The paucity of students majoring in STEM-related fields is a pending crisis for the country. While this statement is certainly true today, by itself it may make you check the cover date of this magazine.

After all, the same sentence has been uttered many times since Sputnik 1 took flight in 1957. It was repeated with great anguish when A Nation at Risk was published in 1983. And it is being said again today—by President Obama, by executives at leading science and engineering companies, by officials at NASA and the National Science Foundation, and by presidential colleagues in colleges and universities around the country.

So what’s different now and, more importantly, how can your school help reverse this trend? First, today’s crisis is heightened by two sets of statistics going in opposite directions. While scientists, engineers and mathematicians continue to retire and leave the field in large numbers, the percentage of students seeking STEM-related college degrees is stagnant and, in some fields, rapidly decreasing.

But the biggest reason to refocus on this perennial issue is simply that today the tools are available to make a difference. Studies and programs in the last five years alone have helped pinpoint not just a number of problems holding back STEM undergraduate growth, but also the solutions that can reverse the decline and help boost student enrollment.

The Math Problem

“The engineering workforce is retiring,” says Bev Watford, director of the Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity at Virginia Tech. “Companies will lose a huge percentage” of these workers in the coming years. Many students who are smart enough to become engineers don’t even consider the field, because “they don’t know what engineers do,” she adds. “There are no TV shows about engineers.”

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