The growing restrictions are increasingly forcing more Black, Latino and other underrepresented students of color away from STEM majors into less lucrative fields, said Zachary Bleemer, the study’s lead author and Princeton University assistant professor who has long researched such disparities at the University of California and other institutions.Ī Bleemer-led study in March found that growing restrictions at UC campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz between 19 reduced by 20% underrepresented minorities entering those top STEM majors. A Brookings Institution research brief last month reported that three-fourths of 2021 graduates in those high-earning majors at 106 top public research universities faced firm requirements that restrict admissions, such as qualifying grade point averages in prescribed courses - an increase of more than one-third over the last two decades.įor Subscribers The most lucrative majors? Some community college grads can outearn elite university peersĬommunity college graduates in healthcare fields can outearn humanities students even from elite universities such as Stanford, UC Berkeley and UCLA, underscoring how much majors can matter. In addition, students face growing entry barriers to STEM majors in public universities, as demand to enroll in such fields as computer science, business, economics, engineering and nursing outstrips capacity. Access to chemistry and physics classes was similarly more limited for underrepresented minority students. ![]() Only 38% of 26,300 public high schools with high proportions of Black and Latino students offered calculus that year, compared with half of all schools. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights showed a significant racial gap in access to those classes. By contrast, 83% of high schools in large suburban areas offered calculus.Ĭhemistry classes were offered at 88% of high schools, and physics, 74%.ĭata from 2015-16 from the U.S. Access to calculus was more limited in large cities and rural areas, where just over half of public schools offered the course. “You have one of the most academically rigorous schools on the planet that has arguably one of the highest bars for admission, saying that an alternative pathway that is free and accessible to anyone is now a means to meeting their requirements,” said Khan, whose nonprofit offers free courses, test prep and tutoring to more than 152 million users.Įven as demand for STEM skills accelerates, federal data for 2017-18 showed that only 65% of public high schools offered calculus that school year. The Pasadena-based institute, with a 3% admission rate last year, boasts 46 Nobel laureates and cutting-edge research in such fields as earthquake engineering, behavioral genetics, geochemistry, quantum information and aerospace. ![]() While Caltech is small - only 2,400 students, about 40% of them undergraduates - Khan said he hoped its prestigious reputation would encourage other institutions to examine their admission barriers and find creative solutions to ease them. ![]() Sal Khan, academy founder, said Caltech’s action is a “huge deal” for equitable access to college. One of Caltech’s alternative paths is taking Khan Academy‘s free, online classes and scoring 90% or higher on a certification test. But Caltech held firm, making no exceptions, even for “absolutely astounding” applicants, as one faculty member put it. For years, the institute, a global powerhouse of science, technology, engineering and math education, fielded hundreds of calls each year from distraught students and parents about the issue. Miranda managed to double up on math courses in sophomore year to reach calculus as a senior, but not all students have the wherewithal - or support - to take that path.Īnd scores of students don’t even have that chance, because more than one-third of the nation’s high schools don’t offer calculus, and many also lack physics and chemistry classes, two other Caltech admission requirements. Her Redwood City school didn’t offer algebra in eighth grade, which threw her off the progression of high school math classes leading to calculus - a long-standing Caltech admission requirement. ![]() But she almost didn’t make it to the California Institute of Technology. Kimberly Miranda is the brainy daughter of Guatemalan immigrants and the first in her family to attend college.
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