The Importance of Community Colleges in Students’ Choice to Major in STEM

ABSTRACT

This article investigates whether attending a community college is related to an increase in the number of students majoring and graduating with degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) at four‐year colleges. We follow a longitudinal sample of students in North Carolina from middle school through college graduation, including some who attended a community college. Our multilevel models indicate that for our sample of students, who attended a four‐year institution and declared a major within 6 years of high school graduation, ever attending a community college and/or starting post‐secondary education at a community college have a significant positive relationship with their likelihood of declaring and graduating with a STEM major. Results hold true even after controlling for sample self‐selection through propensity score matching techniques. Our findings also show that the benefits of community college attendance on students’ likelihood of declaring and graduating with a STEM major are not restricted to only low‐SES students. Overall, this study supports the notion that two‐year colleges could work as means of helping push students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds into STEM.

KEYWORDS:

• Community college
• STEM
• socioeconomic status
• multilevel models
• propensity score matching

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Science Foundation [grant 1420363], Duke Energy Special Initiatives Fund [#678210].