Thousands of dollars, years of studying and no degree.
This is the sad and often unacknowledged reality for roughly half of America’s college students who fail to earn a bachelor’s degree. An even more alarming study done by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute shows that if you’re a science, technology, engineering or mathematics student ““ majors we frequently think lead to the most secure futures ““ you are far less likely to graduate at all.
According to the recent study, although interest in STEM fields is at an all-time high, only 38 percent of STEM students actually graduate with a STEM degree, and another 18 percent graduate in non-STEM fields. This leaves a whopping 44 percent of STEM students who do not graduate at all.
Undergraduates at UCLA have much higher graduation rates than the national average ““ 89 percent ““ but the majority of them graduate with degrees in non-STEM fields.
Of the 7,193 degrees awarded between 2008 and 2009 at UCLA, only 36.7 percent of them were in life science, physical science or engineering programs.
As an ex-science student now in the humanities, I think South Campus could take a tip or two from the North that would stop so many students from fleeing. Keeping students in STEM majors means keeping their motivation high.
The desperate competition among science students created by the curve system of grading kills motivation.
Too many science and engineering professors create impossible tests with averages below 50 percent and then curve the grading scale so that an A goes to the people with the highest scores, regardless of what percentage of the exam they got right. Because of this, students shy away from collaboration in the hopes that their peers will “help” them get an A by failing the exam.
Martin Covington, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley, states in his book “Making the Grade, A Self-Worth Perspective on Motivation and School Reform,” that when good grades are limited, “failure is more likely to be interpreted as a matter of personal inadequacy, whereas success was often seen as the result of chance or good fortune. … Individuals are likely only to continue striving only for as long as they remain successful. No one wants to continue if the result is shame and self-recrimination.”
I’m not saying we should write easy tests and sacrifice the rigor of our courses.
Grades should be mostly based on challenging and fair exams as avenues for students to improve these grades via evidence of their engagement with the material.
One chemistry professor I had, Professor Steven Hardinger, has it right.
He uses a straight grading scale before the quarter begins which deems an A as 90 percent and above, A- as 85-89.9 percent, etc. Students in his class even have the opportunity to earn extra credit points by asking and answering insightful questions in the discussion forum on his class Web site.
He occasionally adjusts the scale very slightly (an A might go down to an 88 instead of a 90) at the end of the quarter to make up for an unusually difficult test.
I find this milder form of curving far less egregious than traditional curving ““ if a student has mastered 88-90 percent of difficult material, then the student clearly deserves an A.
When students receive As for mastering only 50 percent of class material, it is evident that either the tests are far too challenging for the scope of the course or teachers aren’t being effective.
To argue that students are simply not studying enough is preposterous when class averages are so low.
Imagine an English class structured like a biology class: Students read their books, listen to their professor explain it in lecture and then take a test on it. Obviously, this method of teaching lacks the depth of critical thinking that can only be achieved through a plethora questions and analysis, and so is now virtually unthinkable in the humanities.
Yet for some baffling reason, this is the way most science classes I have taken are run.
It is well-known that one of the best ways of learning and retaining information is by teaching it to someone else. Like in my chemistry class, students should either be required or highly encouraged by extra credit points to take turns solving problems.
Furthermore, professors should take advantage of discussion sections by enacting more stringent policies regarding the way they are run.
Sections in the sciences waste student fees when students have little incentive to attend; they are often not graded and consist of teaching assistants spending all of their time at the board explaining problems to select students.
Occasional quizzes may increase attendance but ““ like exams ““ at the expense of group work. Most humanities classes allocate 15 to 20 percent of student’s grade to their participation in section which inevitably keeps section quality high.
The purpose of discussion sections should be to supplement and enhance lectures, not to mimic them. And they shouldn’t try to replace office hours by becoming Q-and-A sessions.
While the U.S. may host the best universities in the world, the country ranks a low 14th in college graduation rates. We cannot hope to compete on the world stage if we continue to lose students, especially from the sciences.
Universities must make appropriate changes to the way curricula are taught if they are to keep their students interested and invested in their studies.
E-mail Nijhawan at anijhawan@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.