Study finds that STEM career days increase high school students’ career aspirations in STEM fields
Marie Donlon | November 07, 2023Students who attend college-hosted STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) career days are reportedly more likely to pursue a career in the STEM field, according to a new study.
Conducted by the University of Missouri in collaboration with Harvard-Smithsonian researchers, the study found there are benefits to be had when college recruiters introduce high school students to STEM-related opportunities, including helping to increase and diversify the STEM workforce in the U.S.
Source: University of Missouri
To make this determination, the University of Missouri team analyzed the data from a survey conducted by Harvard University that asked roughly 16,000 college students if they attended a college-hosted STEM career day during their high school years. The responses revealed that students who attended such college-hosted STEM-days were likelier to go on to pursue STEM-related careers versus students who did not attend college-hosted STEM career days.
“Now that we have found that this type of intervention works for turning that potential interest in STEM into career aspirations in STEM, we can work on designing these interventions in a way to be even more effective and accessible to develop a more diverse STEM workforce,” the researchers reasoned. “If you want someone to be good at something, you want them to develop a sense of efficacy, which is about putting them in a position where they can see themselves doing it and succeeding at it, and seeing other people that look like them doing it as well.”
Such efforts, even conducted at the middle and elementary school levels with STEM clubs and STEM programs, could potentially help to make the U.S., who trails other countries in terms of STEM talent, more competitive, the researchers concluded.
The study is detailed in the article “A quasi-experimental study of the impact of college-run science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career days on American students’ STEM career aspirations,” which appears in the International Journal of Science Education.
