Media Contact: Carmen Ramos Chandler, carmen.chandler@csun.edu, (818) 677-2130
When trying to affect change, information is power.
A team of California State University, Northridge business faculty and a graduate student have put together a 211-page report documenting the experiences of women CSUN alumni who have graduated with degrees in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
Their goal: to provide alumni, faculty, staff and students with insights into the women’s experience in STEM, information that can be used to improve the STEM programs and student success in the labor market after graduation.
“Our findings largely align with national studies of women college graduates’ earnings,” said CSUN management professor Richard Moore, who, along with his fellow researchers, works in the David Nazarian College of Business and Economics. “Initially, women have similar earnings to men and, over time, a gap between men and women grows so that, after 10 to 15 years in the labor market, men earn more than women. We find this to be true in most STEM fields at CSUN, and at both the bachelor’s and master’s level.”
Joining Moore on the project were economics professor Kenneth Chapman, assistant professor of management Zhaleh Semnani Azad and graduate student Krina Gajjar. Their report, “Degrees of Success: CSUN Women in STEM Graduates’ Labor Market Experience,” was commissioned by CSUN’s WISE: Women in Science and Engineering, which wanted data they could use to inform their support of women STEM students at the university and after they graduate.
The researchers conducted their study using data from CalStatePays.org, an interactive website that tracks the longitudinal earnings and employment of approximately 670,000 students who entered any one of six Los Angeles-area CSU campuses — CSUN; California State University, Dominguez Hills; California State University, Channel Islands; California State University, Long Beach; California State University, Fullerton; and California Polytechnic University, Pomona, known as the CSU6 — over the last 20 year. Specifically, they looked at the experiences of graduates of the College of Science and Mathematics and the College of Engineering and Computer Science.
They found that the College of Science and Mathematics graduates more women than the College of Engineering and Computer Science, but women who graduate from the College of Engineering and Computer Science earn more. Regardless of the college, most women STEM graduates earn more than the typical CSU6 graduate.
Women graduates with bachelor’s degrees from CSUN’s College of Science and Mathematics are more likely to go on to attain a postgraduate degree than women graduates with bachelor’s degrees from the College of Engineering and Computer Science.
Women graduates from the College of Engineering and Computer Science may be less likely to go to graduate school, as they can earn a high salary without a graduate degree, Chapman said.
“This is partially driven by the fact that many science and math graduates go into the field education, and teacher training in California is done at the postgraduate level,” he said.
According to the study, women earn more than men two years after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in most STEM fields but, by 10 years after graduation, men earn more than women in most STEM fields.
The researchers attributed the earnings decline to the lack of opportunities in certain career paths available to women, as well as the fact that women bear heavier responsibilities for their families.
“As much as we’ve like to think we’ve progressed, the reality is that women bear most, if not all, of the responsibility for childcare and housekeeping,” Moore said. “As such, it may very well be that women CSUN STEM graduates are avoiding the ‘greedy jobs’ — jobs that pay well but demand all your attention and time — to ensure they are available for caregiving responsibilities at home.”
The researchers pointed out that women’s biggest earning advantages are found in fields that still lack female representation, such as electrical engineering.
Chapman noted that the industries in which women graduates of the College of Engineering and Computer Science work largely reflects the structure of the metro-Los Angeles labor market. For example, a high proportion of engineering graduates work in the manufacturing industry, though men are more likely to work in manufacturing than women, he said.
Graduates of the College of Science and Mathematics with only a bachelor’s degree are more likely to work in healthcare, while those who go on to attain any graduate degrees are likely to work in the field of education. This is true for men and women, and likely because of California’s requirement that K-12 teacher training be done at the postgraduate level, the researchers said.
The report breaks down this data for each of the departments in both colleges, so faculty, staff and students can have access to information that applies to them, Moore said.
“Degrees of Success” is only the first phase of the WISE-commissioned study. Semnani Azad is also exploring what roles demographics, identity and personal experience play in the decisions made by CSUN women students and alumni studying and working in STEM.
“CSUN has a very diverse population,” Semnani Azad said. “We’re looking at how that intersects with gender identity and then how that influences degree choices and career choices. We’re also looking how one’s gender identity works with a STEM identity, since some folks in STEM strongly identify with being in STEM. We’re exploring how that identity works if you are woman. We’re also looking at the roles all these identities play in people wanting to stay in their careers, particularly STEM careers. Are they happy? Do they feel fulfilled?
“This is going to be a long-term study so we can get a clearer picture of what is going in in the thought processes of students at CSUN and other Cal States throughout their education and careers,” she said.
The data from the recent report and Semnani Azad’s continuing study provide valuable information for students, faculty staff and alumni as they develop programs to help the students achieve their academic and career goals, Moore said. He noted that faculty in the College of Engineering and Computer Science are already using information in the first report to inform their efforts to better support students in their programs.
