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By the Numbers: Increasing the Graduation Rates of Minority Students in STEM Fields

According to the recent ACE report Increasing the Success of Minority Students in Science and Technology, African-American and Hispanic students who began college in 1995–96 at four-year institutions were interested in majoring in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields at rates similar to their white and Asian-American peers. And after three years, these groups persisted in STEM fields at nearly identical rates (56 percent of African Americans and Hispanics began college by majoring in these fields, compared with 57 percent of whites and Asian Americans). However, despite these initially positive indicators, African-American and Hispanic students in these fields ultimately earn bachelor's degrees at lower rates than white and Asian-American students earn them.

Campus leaders should consider these data as they benchmark their own institutional rates of African-American and Hispanic enrollment in STEM fields and contemplate how the graduation rates of these students differ from the rates of whites and Asian Americans in the same fields. . . .

Excerpted from the spring 2006 issue of The Presidency. To subscribe to the magazine, please call (301) 632-6757, or order online through ACE's bookstore.