Collaborative Research: The Student Debt Crisis, STEM Education, and Post-Graduation Outcomes: Evidence from a Multi-Modal Study

About This Grant

The Ohio State University and Texas Tech University are collaborating on an EDU Core Research project to identify factors that affect participation in STEM education and the workforce. This project will specifically address access to STEM education and the workforce by examining student debt and its effects on participation in STEM majors. Students who major in STEM fields frequently earn more than their non-STEM counterparts, and STEM is critical for the economy and for addressing today's needs and opportunities. However, the up-front costs of college and the challenges of STEM curricula can be formidable, often leading students to make choices that may lead to increased debt loads. This project undertakes quantitative and qualitative analyses of how student debt and STEM majoring affect each other and jointly shape educational, graduation, and post-graduation outcomes, including decisions to continue in a STEM major, time to graduation, income, debt, and financial burdens. This project addresses causality concerns by testing two key hypotheses. The first hypothesis suggests that college costs and resulting educational debt have become important drivers of student decisions. The second hypothesis proposes that student debt is an important determinant of student behavior, including major choice, major switching, and degree completion. The project's quantitative analysis is using unique, population-level administrative data from the State of Ohio to conduct causal analyses, investigate differences across socioeconomic and demographic groups, study differences by type of public institution, and ask whether and how these relationships have changed as students have taken on higher debt burdens. This work is informed by a complementary qualitative analysis of interviews with students at public universities to understand their subjective decision-making experiences related to debt, STEM majors, and STEM careers. Taken together, the work will greatly advance understanding of the causal and subjective mechanisms shaping the size of the nation's future STEM workforce. This project is supported by NSF's EDU Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad and enduring: STEM learning and STEM learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.