Salary Gains for STEM Students of Color

BDPA strives to encourage our student members to go to college and major in STEM fields. Our efforts should be re-doubled as we learn that college students of color who major in the STEM fields – science, technology, engineering and math – earn 25 percent more than do minority students who study humanities or education, according to a study in the new issue of Research in Higher Education (abstract available here). Further, those minority students who ended up in jobs related to their STEM degrees earned at least 50 percent more than fellow students who majored in the humanities or education. The students in the study were not a random sample, but more than 1,000 Asian and Pacific Islander, Latino and black students who were scholarship applicants for the Gates Millennium Scholars Program.

"The premiums for majoring in STEM fields are huge," said Tatiana Melguizo, lead author of the study and associate professor of education at the University of Southern California. "We need to educate students that if they get a job in a STEM-related occupation, they have an even higher earning premium. Otherwise, students aren’t reaping the economic benefit of all the hard work they went through as undergrads."