A good research paper topic is to discuss students’ loss of interest in science education once they reach college. Getting elementary and even high school age students interested in science is fairly easy when they learn low level sciences and participate in science fairs. Yet once they reach their freshman year in college, they are slammed with calculus, trigonometry, physics, chemistry and other advanced sciences. Many drop out—a whopping 60 percent of engineering, science and pre-med majors switch to other majors. The reasons are difficulty of the subjects they are required to take for the majors they thought they wanted to pursue, their inadequate math preparations in high school and their fear of getting low grades in that field

For the better part of the last decade educators, industry leaders and policymakers have promoted an increase in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) curriculum in high school and college.

Businesses are increasingly technical and jobs in these fields tend to pay well. Groups like the STEM Education Coalition have lobbied federal and state lawmakers on STEM education issues in an effort to improve it at all levels.

The coalition has worked to develop new STEM teachers and expand the number of students in the STEM pipeline. Their efforts appear to have paid off, at least in terms of the number of students embarking on STEM fields.

What they found first was that low-performing students in STEM fields left the curriculum because they dropped out of college. It raises the question, without providing the answer, whether these students might have continued their education had they been in a less-challenging field of study.

Second, the study found that the high-performing students who quit STEM did so largely by switching to another major.