Institutional Selectivity and Occupational Outcomes for STEM Graduates: A Generational Comparison

ABSTRACT

To increase the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce, U.S. education policy has emphasized the pathways from education to STEM careers. While some scholars argue that employers prioritize the degree, and not institutional affiliation, in hiring graduates, the argument needs to be warranted with more recent data accounting for the changing market structure. Furthermore, some studies found that having a STEM degree matters more than institutional selectivity, particularly for occupational outcomes of women and racial minorities. Yet there is slim empirical evidence to support this conclusion. Using data from the National Survey of Recent College Graduates, we examine how occupational outcomes are different for different STEM degrees generated by different selectivity of institutions for those who graduated in the 1990s, early and mid-2000s, and late 2000s. Female graduates, although they entered the industry and STEM fields at no different levels from their male counterparts, still earned significantly lower wages. However, we found that the value of institutional selectivity changes over time as it moderates the gender wage gaps in the late 2000s. Minority STEM graduates enjoyed similar salaries to nonminority graduates, but retention in STEM fields after graduation was less likely, but also moderated by the institutional selectivity.

KEYWORDS:

• Occupational outcomes
• institutional selectivity
• science
• technology
• engineering and math (STEM)
• STEM workforce

Acknowledgments

The authors also would like to recognize additional support provided by Arizona State University’s Center for Organization Research and Design and Dr. Stuart Bretschneider.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For example, Xu (2017) showed that while the B&B data include the weighted sample of 15,048 college graduates, only 14.3% (n = 2,147) of the sample were STEM graduates, and female students in STEM majors was 35.6% out of that 14.3% (n = 764).

2. According to the weighted data, about 8% of the recent graduates were not employed at the time of data collection (1 to 4 years after graduation), and employment status was highly contingent on the time of graduation and contemporary economic situations. While only about 3.10% and 3.33% of the graduates were unemployed in the late 1990s and in the early and mid-2000s, respectively, this figure jumped to 5.50% among those who graduated in the late 2000s.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the American Educational Research Association which receives funds for its “AERA Grants Program” from the National Science Foundation under NSF award NSF-DRL #1749275. Opinions reflect those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of AERA or NSF.