The Downside of Good Peers: How Classroom Composition Differentially Affects Men’s and Women’s STEM Persistence

Stefanie Fischer

No 1605, Working Papers from California Polytechnic State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper investigates whether class composition can help explain why women are disproportionately more likely to fall out of the “STEM†pipeline. Identification comes from a standardized enrollment process at a large public university that essentially randomly assigns freshmen to different mandatory introductory chemistry lectures. Using administrative data, I find that women who are enrolled in a class with higher ability peers are less likely to graduate with a STEM degree, while men’s STEM persistence is unaffected. The effect is largest for women in the bottom third of the ability distribution. I rule out that this is driven solely by grades.

Keywords: Higher Education; Gender; STEM; Classroom Composition Effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I23 I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpl:wpaper:1605

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