Open AccessSCIENCE AND ENGINEERING GRADUATES: CAREER ADVANCEMENT AND CAREER CHANGE
Author(s) -
Grandy Jerilee
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
ets research report series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.235
H-Index - 5
ISSN - 2330-8516
DOI - 10.1002/j.2333-8504.1998.tb01780.x
Subject(s) - bachelor , sample (material) , graduate students , stratified sampling , value (mathematics) , psychology , science and engineering , work (physics) , career development , mathematics education , medical education , pedagogy , mathematics , engineering , political science , statistics , engineering ethics , medicine , mechanical engineering , law , chemistry , chromatography
This project studied science and engineering (S/E) graduates who, after having been out of college some years, planned to return to graduate school either to advance their careers or to change careers. Two samples were studied. First, from the 1990–91 GRE files, there were more than 10,000 examinees who had bachelor's degrees in mathematics, natural sciences, computer sciences, or engineering (S/E) and had been out of college at least 5 years. All were either applying to graduate school or had just begun graduate work. About 40% of engineers planned to change fields, and more than half of science graduates planned to switch. This great a loss of talent from the science/engineering talent pool motivated the second part of the study. The second part of the study consisted of a questionnaire survey of a stratified sample drawn from the 1991–92 GRE files of science and engineering graduates who had been out of college at least five years. Women and minorities were oversampled so that separate analyses could be done for members of these groups. The sample was surveyed by mail to learn what factors might explain why some graduates were planning to continue in S/E while others were switching to different fields. Responses were obtained from 2,201 (82% of the original sample). People changing fields, on average, were older and had been out of college longer. More important than any other variable was that they placed a greater value on making a contribution to society and working directly with other people than on the satisfaction of technical challenge. There was no evidence that people switched fields because they were unemployed. Field switching was more frequent for females than males, for African Americans more than other ethnic groups, and for graduates in biological sciences more than graduates in other fields. Correlates of field switching were studied, and differences by gender and ethnic group were noted. There was very little gender difference in ratings of satisfaction with the most recent job in S/E. Gender was associated with many other variables, such as the importance of making a contribution to society. In a path analysis model using LISREL, the entire association between gender and continuation in S/E was accounted for by other variables.