Despite decades of national efforts to increase students' participation and success in STEM, bachelor's degrees in STEM continue to notably lag the labor force demand. Asian students represent one group that disproportionately contributes to the share of STEM degrees. Understanding their experiences can help to illuminate ways of increasing STEM…

Gendered field-of-study choice is a lively topic of discussion. The explanation usually given for the fact that women are still an exception in typically 'male' fields--particularly STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)--employs domain-specific stereotypes regarding men's and women's 'natural' abilities in different fields. The…

Recent research on curricular analytics suggests that the structure of a college major may impact major persistence and degree completion. Contributing to this line of research, we propose and test a new measure of the "lived curriculum" that captures the extent to which cohorts within a major take the same exact course-taking path as…

Students' choice of college major is related to their interests (Porter and Umbach in Res High Educ 47:429-449, 2006), and students whose major is well-aligned with their interests are more likely to persist in that major (Allen and Robbins in Res Higher Educ 49(1):62-79, 2008) and complete a college degree in a timely manner (Allen and Robbins in…

This study delves into disparities in undergraduate research participation among Black/African American and Hispanic/Latinx students using large-scale, multi-institutional data. The study's focus is guided by Intersectionality Theory and Quantitative Critical Theory, examining how race, social identities, academic majors, and institutional…

While numerous studies have highlighted the consequences of exclusion in STEM, fewer studies have empirically tested the benefits of inclusion in peer relationships. We focus on the impact of having cross-racial or cross-gender study partners among one's close friends in a national sample of 408 STEM majors. Using structural equation modeling, we…

In this article, a large data set containing every course taken by every undergraduate student in a major university in Canada over 10 years is analysed. Modern machine learning algorithms can use large data sets to build useful tools for the data provider, in this case, the university. In this article, two classifiers are constructed using random…

Grading standards in college vary substantially across fields, especially among STEM fields that tend to give lower grades than non-STEM fields. Prior research has demonstrated that grades affect course and major choices, but less is known about how policies oriented to reduce differences in grading standards across fields affect persistence and…

While a large body of research addresses both subject choice and student dropout in higher education, much less is known about switching the initially chosen major. Therefore, we ask why students switch their major in higher education and analyse this for the case of Germany, taking the timing and the degree of such switches (within and across…

Despite the growing evidence of informational interventions on college and major choices, we know little about how such light-touch interventions affect the gender gap in STEM majors. Linking survey data to administrative records of Chinese college applicants, we conducted a large-scale randomized experiment to examine the STEM gender gap in the…

A third of the 2- and 4-year undergraduates beginning college in 2011-2012 changed their major in the first 3 years of enrollment. Yet, few studies have examined the effects of major switching on student outcomes, particularly in community colleges. Major switching can delay or impede college completion through excess credit accumulation, or it…

This study seeks to understand which socio-demographic variables explain bystander readiness to help (BRH) among a diverse (via race/ethnicity) sample of college students. This study uses an intersectional approach by investigating how gender intersects with variables, specific to a college student population (e.g., class level, college of major,…

Using hierarchical linear modeling, this study examined how positive faculty support is associated with mathematical self-concept development among students in STEM fields and how the association differs for male and female students. The study utilized data from the 2003 Freshman Survey and the 2007 College Senior Survey (CSS) and a sample of 2184…

There is persistent underrepresentation of female and ethnic and racial minority students in computing. While community colleges provide a unique opportunity to increase diversity in computing fields, many students do not persist. This study aims to understand the factors that predict students' momentum--completion of a certificate, degree, or…

Traditionally colleges have relied on standalone non-credit-bearing developmental education (DE) to support students academically and ensure readiness for college-level courses. As emerging evidence has raised concerns about the effectiveness of DE courses, colleges and states have been experimenting with approaches that place students into…