Collaborative Research: Early Career Transitions into STEM Employment: Processes Shaping Retention and Satisfaction

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Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Cornell University are implementing a project to understand large gender differences in occupational retention among STEM graduates in early career, with a particular emphasis on investigating the roles played by employment conditions, alternative job opportunities, and workplace climate in retaining recent graduates or propelling them into non-STEM fields. Various studies report considerable attrition within the first few years of employment, even among those who successfully transition into the STEM labor force initially; exit rates from STEM occupations are particularly high among women. However, survey data are less able to provide in-depth knowledge of why individual STEM workers choose to exit their field and what processes are involved in making such a decision. This study will help explain the roots of the labor shortages now claimed by some employers and inform policy and practice so that more trained STEM graduates, especially women, are able to build successful careers in the STEM labor force. The general problem of high turnover in STEM employment, including diversion among women and men, is significant given political and economic claims made about the importance of a well-trained STEM labor force in ensuring U.S. competitiveness in a global marketplace.The researchers will use a mixed-methods approach to study a cohort of 200 chemistry and chemical engineering graduates to interrogate the reasons for the low transition and retention rates in STEM employment following graduation. Their aims are to (1) collect and analyze prospective data on the work expectations of chemistry-related graduates, perceived barriers or obstacles to employment in STEM, and factors affecting decision-making in the choice of first job; (2) identify gender differences in the career and family plans of chemistry-related graduates, as well as gender differences in initial occupational placement; and (3) track the retention of women and men in the early STEM career and expose the sources of attrition, especially differential attrition among women. They will use comparison groups of chemistry-related graduates who never worked in a STEM field and those who begin but subsequently divert to non-STEM jobs to facilitate the comparison of post-graduation earnings, upward mobility, and job satisfaction of those in STEM and non-STEM employment. The ability to prospectively analyze gender differences in field retention in the four years after graduation allows the team to adjudicate different theories of gendered persistence in STEM employment.