It sounds like an interesting dataset. I would be interested in assessing completion stats by category (sex, race, nationality, ethnicity, ses, parental religiosity, and parental political views) vs persistence in STEM as a function of grades. It would also be interesting to see how the comparative strength in verbal aptitude correlated. My prediction is that the better the relative score on the verbal portion of the SAT is to the math score the less likely that a marginal student will persist in STEM. I also predict that the more need dependent aid a student receives, the less likely the student will persist as a function of grade (at my institution students have to retain a 3.0 gpa to keep institutional and state financial aid - students with low grades in intro calc, chemistry, and physics disproportionately leave for easier majors the more dependent they are on aid to stay in college).
I suspect religion and politics play a role as well. Ecklund’s work showed that the childhood religiosity predicts adult religious practice just as well for elite scientists as the general population. Thus the underrepresentation of religious scientists is likely a selection effect (I bet a study on political views would show something similar). Thus one might expect that a student who from a religious home would be more on the fence for STEM. Poor intro grades would thus have a disproportionate effect as it relates to persistence (ie, they are more likely to hop to business when the going gets tough). Since black and hispanic americans are more religiously observant than their white counterparts (who are more observant than their Asian counterparts), I predict that this will contribute to persistence as a function of race/ethnicity.
So I can think of three factors that could impact persistence in STEM that correlate with race among students who earn a DFW in intro courses: parental SES, religiosity, and comparative verbal skills. Maybe systemic racism drives some or all of these, but even if this is the case, that isn’t related to what happens in the intro courses.
Thanks Lee. Unfortunately, for.those who who lack a background to understand the methodological failures, the fact it's in a fancy journal and has lots of cool sounding terms, not to mention a conclusion that they already belive, means it will spread far and wide while those asking questions will be ignored. Your work is vital, especially because you are not particularly ideological. Please.keep up the.good.fight
It sounds like an interesting dataset. I would be interested in assessing completion stats by category (sex, race, nationality, ethnicity, ses, parental religiosity, and parental political views) vs persistence in STEM as a function of grades. It would also be interesting to see how the comparative strength in verbal aptitude correlated. My prediction is that the better the relative score on the verbal portion of the SAT is to the math score the less likely that a marginal student will persist in STEM. I also predict that the more need dependent aid a student receives, the less likely the student will persist as a function of grade (at my institution students have to retain a 3.0 gpa to keep institutional and state financial aid - students with low grades in intro calc, chemistry, and physics disproportionately leave for easier majors the more dependent they are on aid to stay in college).
I suspect religion and politics play a role as well. Ecklund’s work showed that the childhood religiosity predicts adult religious practice just as well for elite scientists as the general population. Thus the underrepresentation of religious scientists is likely a selection effect (I bet a study on political views would show something similar). Thus one might expect that a student who from a religious home would be more on the fence for STEM. Poor intro grades would thus have a disproportionate effect as it relates to persistence (ie, they are more likely to hop to business when the going gets tough). Since black and hispanic americans are more religiously observant than their white counterparts (who are more observant than their Asian counterparts), I predict that this will contribute to persistence as a function of race/ethnicity.
So I can think of three factors that could impact persistence in STEM that correlate with race among students who earn a DFW in intro courses: parental SES, religiosity, and comparative verbal skills. Maybe systemic racism drives some or all of these, but even if this is the case, that isn’t related to what happens in the intro courses.
Thanks Lee. Unfortunately, for.those who who lack a background to understand the methodological failures, the fact it's in a fancy journal and has lots of cool sounding terms, not to mention a conclusion that they already belive, means it will spread far and wide while those asking questions will be ignored. Your work is vital, especially because you are not particularly ideological. Please.keep up the.good.fight
thanks for doing this...
if the current Egalitarian mania is a wildfire burning through our culture and society, you are one of our best firemen.
I wonder if the authors would make any connections between those Michigan SAT results and the STEM outcomes they analyzed?