دانلود رایگان مقاله ممنوعیت اقدام مثبت دولت و تکمیل درجه STEM

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of statewide affirmative action bans on minority STEM degree completions at US public four-year colleges. The number of minority students completing STEM degrees at highly selective colleges falls by 19% five years after affirmative action bans, while there is no change in the total number of students completing STEM degrees. This indicates that a nontrivial number of minority students only admitted to highly selective colleges because of affirmative action graduate in STEM during periods of race preferences in college admissions. There is no convincing evidence of effects at moderately selective colleges. These findings speak to the recent debate about the extent to which minority students admitted to top ranked colleges due to affirmative action may have higher probabilities of graduating in the sciences if they had attended lower ranked colleges. Results are presented with the caveats that changes in race reporting caused by affirmative action bans may upwardly bias estimated effects, and that estimated aggregate effects may not fully capture all student-level responses.

6. Conclusion

The importance of increasing the number of minorities completing STEM degrees is underscored by the large projected growth in the minority population and the argument that STEM graduates boost the competitiveness of the US economy. Increasing the number of minorities in STEM also has the potential to reduce race income gaps given the large labor market returns that minorities receive in STEM fields (Melguizo & Wolniak, 2012). Difference-in-difference, event study and synthetic control analyses reveal that minority STEM degree completions in public four-year colleges decline following statewide affirmative action bans. The effect is found at highly selective colleges and most evident in engineering programs. We cannot find convincing evidence of effects at moderately selective colleges, and, when considering highly and moderately selective colleges combined, minority participation in STEM also appears to decline. Overall, these findings suggest that student-college mismatch in STEM arising from race preferences in college admissions does not appear to be an overarching and pervasive phenomenon in the study sample, and affirmative action may actually be an effective policy for boosting minority representation in STEM in some circumstances.