ABSTRACT

Underrepresented minority (URM) students are subjected to historically rooted inequities when pursuing an education, especially in STEM disciplines with little diversity. In order to make STEM education equitable and inclusive, evidence for how students from different racial/ethnic demographics are faring is necessary. We use 10 years of institutional data at a large public US-based university to investigate trends in the majors that Asian, URM, and White students declare, drop, and complete. We find that URM students drop most majors at higher rates compared to other students, particularly in physics and economics. We find alarming GPA trends in that URM students consistently earn lower grades than their Asian and White peers. In some STEM disciplines, the URM students who earn a degree are earning the same grades as the Asian and White students who dropped the major. These troubling trends may signify lack of sufficient support, mentoring, and guidance for the URM students who are already severely disadvantaged particularly at a primarily White institution. These findings call for greater resources and effort for making learning environments equitable and inclusive so that many URM students who come to college with severe disadvantages are appropriately supported and can excel similar to other students.

摘要

代表性不足的少数族裔 (URM) 学生在接受教育时遭受历史根源的不平等，尤其是在多样性很少的 STEM 学科中。为了使 STEM 教育公平和包容，需要有证据证明来自不同种族/民族的学生的情况如何。我们使用美国一所大型公立大学 10 年的机构数据来调查亚洲、URM 和白人学生宣布、放弃和完成的专业的趋势。我们发现，与其他学生相比，URM 学生在大多数专业中的退学率更高，尤其是物理和经济学。我们发现令人担忧的 GPA 趋势是，URM 学生的成绩一直低于亚洲和白人同龄人。在一些 STEM 学科中，获得学位的 URM 学生与放弃该专业的亚裔和白人学生的成绩相同。这些令人不安的趋势可能意味着对已经处于严重不利地位的 URM 学生缺乏足够的支持、指导和指导，尤其是在以白人为主的机构中。这些调查结果要求投入更多资源和努力来打造公平和包容的学习环境，以便许多以严重劣势进入大学的 URM 学生得到适当的支持，并能像其他学生一样表现出色。