Talking About Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences

Rating:
Summary: Intelligently researched, clearly written, very valuable.
Review: The authors interviewed hundreds of college students whose high-school SAT math scores were at least 650 and who started their college careers in natural science, mathematics or engineering.

The interviewees were selected randomly for the authors by the participating colleges and universities, from a much larger pool of students whose academic profiles matched the authors' research design.

In accordance with this research design, approximately half of those interviewed had switched majors out of science-math-engineering (SME) programs by their senior years. The other half of those interviewed were still SME majors as seniors, and planned to graduate with a degree in natural science, mathematics or engineering.

Both groups of students voiced serious criticism of the deliberately competitive, grade on a curve, "overwhelm them and weed them out" approach that is widely used in teaching freshman and sophomore courses in SME-track curricula, particularly calculus, physics and organic chemistry.

The authors found it very difficult to predict which students had switched out of SME-track majors and which had stayed using any of the stay-vs-switch criteria commonly cited by SME faculty members, which include native ability, willingness to work hard, college grades, gender, ethnic background, and high-school preparation for college-level work in the sciences.

Rather, they found that the chief distinguishing characteristic of those who did not switch was the individuals' willingness to put up with the mental and emotional abuse heaped upon them by this "drinking from a fire hose" approach to instruction in their freshman and sophomore years.

These conclusions fit well with my own experiences at a major West Coast research university, as a white male undergraduate with a 750+ SAT verbal score and a 700+ SAT math score (without any special "prepare for the SAT" courses of any kind) who had graduated in the top 5% of my West Coast suburban high school class. I switched out of the SME track at the end of my sophomore year for several of the reasons cited in this book, and graduated two years later with a liberal arts degree in a field that had taught me to think critically, not memorize by blind repetition. Then I returned to the SME track later as a graduate student (no easy feat!) after I had had time to revisit the concepts thrown at me willy nilly in those first two years and see what they were good for. Today, I'm a registered professional engineer with an engineering master's degree, doing quite well in my field.

Based on this book's carefully assembled results and my own experience, I have avoided sending any of my children to my alma mater as freshmen or sophomores.

Instead, I have recommended that they do as my younger brother did. He did his freshman and sophomore work at a good community college, then transferred to a small state college with a very limited graduate program for his upper-division courses. Next he earned his master's degree at my alma mater, then went on to another nationally-ranked graduate program for his PhD. At each institution, he found himself in the group of students that enjoyed the focused attention of the faculty, and his SME learning experience was far, far superior to mine.

Read this book. Think about it carefully. Then plan your educational strategy to avoid being "weeded out" by SME faculty who don't want to admit that you exist until you have put up with two solid years of cheerful neglect and brutal abuse.

Rating:
Summary: Shows why it's so vital to keep the FUN in natural science.
Review: This book documents the tragic exit of great talents from the natural sciences that results when overdriven undergraduates lose sight of the fun and sense of wonder that are at the heart of the most successful scientific careers.

Making "Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun" (David and Judith Goodstein, 1996) and "Anno's Mysterious Multiplying Jar" part of the required reading list for all entering freshmen--and giving them the chance to discuss these books with lively professors who have managed to retain their own Feynmanesque senses of fun and wonder--would be a helpful antidote for this.