Science and engineering degree attainment of aspiring-scientists in the United States

ABSTRACT

This study uses the Education Longitudinal Survey of 2002 (ELS:2002) to examine how varying levels of intention (planning) and action (choice) in pursuing a science-based major affect American college students’ degree attainment in Science and Engineering (S&E) fields by age 26. The study is guided by the Social Cognitive Career Theory’s performance model that is appropriate to examine educational attainment. A key element of the theory consists in personal goals to engage in STEM education in college. In this paper, we view students’ intention to pursue specific college majors and/or actual action to enrol in a specific major as an expression of aspirational goals associated with degree attainment, so closer the intention-action gap, more likely to attain the goal. The proposed aspiring-scientist typology appears to be the main determinant of S&E degree attainment by age 26, when controlling for socio-demographic, pre-college, and postsecondary factors. Students with high level of science aspirations have greater chance to complete an S&E degree. Medium-aspiration students are more likely to complete non-S&E degrees, after starting in science-based majors. Low-aspiration students are more likely to attain certificate/associate degrees in any field or be non-completers.

KEYWORDS:

• Science aspirations
• social cognitive career theory
• intention-action gap
• science and engineering degree attainment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical statement

The study is exempt from ethics review board approval because is using existing data publicly available from the National Centre of Education Statistics (NCES) website. The subjects cannot be identified, directly or through identifiers linked to the subjects.