Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) graduates are among the most in demand by employers when they finish school. For these students, it’s easier to find a job, and these jobs tend to be higher paying.
Yet at most major colleges, more men study STEM fields than women. Can part of of the gender wage gap be ascribed to this gap in studying math and science in college?
Priceonomics investigated data from the National Center for Education Statistics and from our customer BestColleges.com to look at which schools have the highest (and lowest) percentage of women who study STEM fields in college.
Put differently, at a given school, how many women are studying engineering or a related field? We analyzed data for the 100 American colleges and universities with the most undergraduates.
Overall, we found that men were much more likely to graduate with a STEM degree at the 100 largest schools in the U.S. in 2013 (the most recent year for which data is available).
The ratio of women studying STEM varies tremendously by school. When looking at just the 100 largest colleges, these are the schools with the highest percentage of female STEM majors :
And the schools with the lowest percentage of women studying STEM?
Note: Data via National Center for Education Statistics and BestColleges.com
At New York University, only around one in 25 undergraduate women pursue a STEM major.
For those of you that want to see all the data, the following table shows the number of women in STEM at each of the hundred schools we looked at:
We know that STEM fields are majority male, and that STEM graduates make more money than their non-STEM classmates. In the fight for equal pay among genders, an important battle will take place in America's science, math, and computer science classrooms.
Note: a full, extended version of this report is available here.
