Is College STEM Education in Crisis? Diversified Instructor Profiles and Student Academic Outcomes

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Policy Perspectives and the Future of STEM Education

Abstract

Decades of research has been devoted to examining teacher quality in mathematics and science at the K-12 level, while discussions about the same issue at the postsecondary level are much more limited. Is teacher quality indeed not a problem in college? Prompted by the steady increase in non-tenure-track faculty in higher education, this paper examines how initial exposure to a field with different types of instructors influences follow-on performance in a large state public college system. Our results indicate that temporary adjuncts have significant negative impacts on subsequent course enrollment and performance compared with either long-term non-tenure faculty or tenure-track faculty across a variety of fields. Such negative impacts are particularly large in STEM related fields at four-year colleges.

Authors

• Di Xu, UCI

• Florence Xiaotao Ran, Teachers College, Columbia University