Posted on 09/28/2022 5:33:33 AM PDT by devane617
A new paper in PNAS Nexus, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that minority students who earn low grades in introductory science, technology, engineering, and math classes are less likely to earn degrees in these subjects than similar white students.
There is a persistent disparity in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education outcomes in the United States. In 2018, women earned 58% of bachelor's degrees, but only 36% of STEM bachelor's degrees. In 2017, Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous people comprised 30% of the U.S. population, and 34% of STEM-intending incoming college students, yet they earned only 18% of actual undergraduate STEM degrees. This has implications for the diversity of STEM professions as well as for the range of research and innovation in such fields.
Students interested in such subjects typically take introductory courses like calculus or general chemistry during their first semester. Colleges may offer such courses in part with the goal of sending a message to students who receive low grades that they should pursue other fields of study. Previous research has established an association between low performance in these courses and a decreased probability of obtaining a STEM degree. However, this association may not be neutral regarding gender and race. Being assigned a low grade in introductory STEM courses might have a greater negative impact on women and racial/ethnic minorities.
Researchers examined records from 109,070 students from six large, public, research-intensive universities between 2005 and 2012, to assess whether low grades in these introductory courses disproportionately impact underrepresented minority students. The investigators studied the records of student performance in introductory courses in physical sciences, life sciences, mathematical and computational sciences, and engineering to discern the likelihood of students earning degrees in these subjects.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
Back in the 60’s; it was pretty good at weeding out the white folks that were not up to speed as well.
Sure!
Then they can design all our good stuff that we end up buying from China.
No room in the schedule.
Gotta get them women studies and the LBGTHQZ ones done first.
We know that white men can no longer play football or basketball.
These days kids aren’t students.
They’re just grist for Deep State’s diploma mills.
iows, they’re bemoaning the fact that these special students can’t muddle their way thru basic calculus, etc and therefore can’t reach the higher courses, which they can’t muddle thru either.....
If you can’t do calculus, you are not going to be an engineer. If women and minorities get that message quicker than white men, then they’ll be wasting less time pursuing a degree they can’t earn. So what’s the problem?
I first saw “C” on the job. I knew FORTRAN really well, but we needed to transition from the IBM mainframe to Sun workstations. Which meant a bunch of us had to learn C and UNIX. Fast. Early 1990s. Ya do what ya gotta do ...
I went from 360 Assembler to “C” on Unix devices in mid 80’s...No way these little no thing Unix systems will ever replace big iron...buy was I wrong.
Of course it weeds out based on ability not color.
MY wife; too.
She tries to describe what she is thinking about, but her words do not work very well either.
I usually have to draw something over and over while she says, “No - the other way.” again and again.
Heh ... currently typing on a Windoze box that would have been a supercomputer back then. I don’t miss JCL. Not even a little bit. I also don’t miss getting the operator to hang tapes for me. Bleh. These are the good old days. I’m glad I learned programming when memory was expensive, though. Taught better programming practice, which comes in handy on microcontrollers.
I’m retired. Nobody can fire me. The most dangerous people on the planet are old retired men. We’re not afraid to tell the truth. We’re not afraid to point out when the emperor has no clothes.
And most important. We’re not afraid to die.
Can’t pass algebra? Well heck lets see how they do in Calculus.
Brilliant!
True. Also, different people have different aptitudes. Not everyone is cut out to be a STEM major in college. Weeding out those who can't cut it is the purpose of the introductory courses. The hard sciences (and math) build upon earlier knowledge. One can't just skip the intro courses and expect to understand what is being taught in the later courses.
Was this written by a woke physicist? Article gave numbers for minority students, but didn’t compare them to all students.
I knew I was smart, so I took challenging classes. Never worried that I was female. Only class I had problems with was Quantum Physics.
This article sounds like a call to give minority students higher grades in intro STEM, so they get confidence. Hopefully they don’t become engineers or medical students.
Your father is quite impressive.
>>Tax work still requires much independent thought, thanks to the 70,000+ pages of the tax code, and the gray areas found there. IMHO, it requires a mindset of battling the IRS and their bureaucracy. Auditing, OTOH, is more rote work from following dozens of checklists.
My wife, the *very* accomplished fairly recently retired tax CPA, agrees. And I’ve watched her do it for years, from time to time, it’s fun to watch.
She once had an IRS person tell another person at her firm, that he didn’t like having to deal with her, she really knew her stuff and made it tough on the IRS people who didn’t. The guy was actually a bit afraid of her! She got her way with them a lot, LOL.
What is DCAA?
Regards,
FreedomPoster
I grew up reading books constantly, mostly fiction. Always read before bed for 2-6 hours. I still read constantly, but I haven’t read a novel in years. I figure I’m still working my brain, but....
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