Determinants of high achieving students' career choices in stem fields

Abstract

One of the most important educational improvements of the 2 I 51 century has occurred in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields (Bybee, 20 I 0). STEM means the integration of disciplines into the real life experiences (Labov et a/. , 2010; Sanders, 2009). Motivated by the need to meet the deficit in the STEM workforce, experts has worked on improving the STEM education (TUSIAD, 2014) Particularly along with the increasing number of university students who choose STEM fields, an urge to improve the quality of the education in such fields has arisen. That's why, it is firstly essential to understand which factors play a role in the choices of students, who get high scores in the University Entrance Exam to pursue a career in such fields. To this end, the main purpose of the present study was to investigate the factors affecting high-achieving students' career choices in STEM fields. In the literature, factors are classified into five different categories: STEM self-efficacy, gender, parental variables, career selection, and high school STEM score. The study examined the reasons behind the choices of students in a certain state university, which requires relatively higher University Entrance Exam scores. Participants consisted of 314 preparatory students who would study either in a STEM or in a Non-STEM field. A 26-item questionnaire including both open ended (N=l2) and Iikert-type (N=l4) questions were used to in the study. The resutls revealed that there were no significant differences between STEM and Non-STEM students regarding their gender and high school STEM scores. Students who chose STEM departments as a major were found to have significantly higher STEM self -efficacy scores and parents with higher interest in STEM than students choosing Non-STEM fields. This might be because the university where the questionnaire was applied is one of the high ranking universities accepting only students who get high points in the University Entry Exam.