Paths Within the STEM Pipeline: Motivations for Changing Biomedical Career

• In Event: Broadening the Terrain: Examining Novel Motivational Processes in STEM Contexts

Abstract

Objectives
Researchers often use a pipeline metaphor to study career pursuit in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), which focuses on preventing students from “leaking out” of STEM careers (e.g., Maltese & Tai, 2011; Sass; 2015). However, this approach ignores students who change career plans without leaving STEM fields. Our emerging research suggests that these students comprise a large proportion of those in the STEM pipeline; they are thus critical to understand in order to boost participation in particular STEM careers for which there are shortages (e.g., the current U.S. shortage of physicians, Boyle, 2020). The present multimethod longitudinal study examined why students make within-pipeline career plan changes in one area of STEM: biomedical fields. Research questions were: (a) What motivational factors (as defined by expectancy-value theory; Eccles-Parsons et al., 1983) did students report to be most influential in making career plan changes within biomedical fields over the course of college? (d) Do gender or ethnicity influence these trends?

Methods
We collected institutional records (course-taking, majors, graduation data) throughout college from 1193 students in an introductory biology course at a U.S. public university, and we interviewed each student near graduation about their career plans. Of these students, 921 (77.2%) graduated with a biomedical degree and pursued a post-graduate biomedical career (62.9% women, 13.6% underrepresented ethnic minority students, i.e., African American, Hispanic/Latino, or Native American). If any of the 921 students reported changing career plans within biomedical fields during college, coders classified (a) their type of career plan change (to a biomedical career requiring the same amount, fewer years, or more years of post-graduate education) and (b) which motivational factors students said influenced their change (competence-related, value-related, or cost/barrier-related; see Table 1.1 for examples).

Results
Almost half (46%) of students changed career plans within the biomedical pipeline, with 25% changing to plans requiring the same amount of future education, 17% to plans requiring fewer years, and 4% to plans requiring more years (see Figure 1.1). Women were more likely than men to change plans, χ2(1)=16.53, p <.001, and to change to careers involving fewer years of future education, χ2(1)=12.30, p<.001. In terms of motivation, most students (75.7%) referenced value-related reasons for changing, most frequently discussing interest or fit. Women who changed referenced value-related reasons more often than men, χ2(1)=3.94, p=.047.

Significance
The sheer number of students changing plans within the biomedical pipeline suggests that we cannot assume students, particularly women, are progressing smoothly toward intended careers just because they are not leaving biomedicine. Our findings suggest that students’ perceptions of value for STEM fields play a key role in explaining why students change plans overall as well as why women change plans more than men. This work supports prior research suggesting that women’s value for particular career paths influences their decision to leave certain STEM subfields (e.g., Cheryan et al., 2016; Eccles & Wang, 2016), but extends it to the understudied realm of students who remain in particular STEM sub-fields yet change career plans within it.

Authors

• Emily Quinn Rosenzweig, University of Georgia

• Judith Harackiewicz, University of Wisconsin