5 hardest and easiest college majors by GPA's

Why aren't more college students earning degrees in engineering and the sciences?

About one out of three college students intend to pursue a STEM major, which stands for science, technology, engineering and math, but most never make it.

A new study from Wake Forest University suggests that a huge reason why so many students abandon their pursuit of science and engineering majors is this: Their professors are grading too hard.

Students, who hope to be science and engineering majors, get discouraged by their grades, which are significantly lower than students in other disciplines. Consequently, they flee for easier "A's". Male students are more likely to bail because of grades than would-be women STEM majors.

Kevin Rask, an economics professor at Wake Forest, drew that conclusion after reviewing the records of more than 5,000 students, who graduated from an unnamed elite liberal arts college in the Northeast from 2001 to 2009.

During this period, the science geeks earned grades that were consistently below other students. Brainy STEM graduates left their school with four out of the five lowest grade point averages:

5 Lowest Grade Point Averages

• Chemistry - 2.78 GPA
  
• Math - 2.90 GPA
  
• Economics - 2.95 GPA
  
• Psychology - 2.98 GPA
  
• Biology - 3.02 GPA
  

5 Highest Grade Point Averages

• Education - 3.36 GPA
  
• Language - 3.34 GPA
  
• English - 3.33 GPA
  
• Music - 3.30 GPA
  
• Religion - 3.22 GPA
  

At a recent conference at Cornell, Rask talked about his STEM major findings:

"The importance of grades can't be understated," the economist said. "The differential in grade inflation inside and outside STEM majors is consistent and an important factor in the attrition."

It seems to me that the best way to produce more scientists and engineers might be to get the professors in those fields to lighten up on their grades. Do the students, who are brave enough to wrestle with organic chemistry and multivariable calculus, need to be crushed at exam time?

The alternative is to get the professors in departments like education and English to grade harder, but I just don't see that ever happening.

[Doowstados]

I can't help but laugh a little at this bottom five. I have an extremely hard time believing as a soon to be physics graduate that engineering (mechanical/civil/aerospace/electrical) and physics did not top this list. From my experience the vast majority of math based science students would be practically killing themselves to earn above a 3.0, let alone experience a 3.0 as the mean score.

CBS really dropped the ball on this one.

[hypnotoad72]

I've a 3.96 in one STEM degree, 3.2 in another, and reaching toward 3.6 for another. Whee.

While GPAs show book smarts, real world experience takes time to build - college is just a starting point people have taken in good faith.

But companies seem to want "instant gratification", will not train from within, effectively demand workers go back to college (and have the workers pay every cent when it wasn't that harsh in the past), and after all that they then say the graduates are not adequately educated!! Methinks there's a tiny disconnect, somewhere... or multiple disconnects, obviously...

And "attrition" is going on toward the working class in the new normal, insanely higher prices (up over 432% between 1982 and now and the wages have increased by respective ratios to compensate), and ALSO noting the concept of grade inflation as put out by instructors by order of their administrators to make the colleges look better, what if the problems are worse than what the article indicates?

Happy researching.

[megan1954]

My son graduated from a very good liberal arts college with a double major, Chemistry and Economics. His GPA was 2.98. As he had maintained a 4.25 GPA at one of the top US high schools, I was critical of him for not maintaing a higher GPA in college. After reading this article, I believe I owe him an apology. Thank you for enlightening me.

[LouLoizides]

I'm an engineer. It's true companies do care too much about grades and that's why grade inflation is always a concern. Sometimes I really think students are better off going to an easier school and getting better grades. The people doing the hiring are not engineers and as a result they have to stick to using a GPA as a tollgate. More credit should ideally be given to project work, the overall talent coming out of the school, the student's internship history, etc. Also the title of this article is really misleading. Having a low GPA doesn't mean the GPAs are low because the courses are hard or professors are grading tougher. The reality is no one has any clue why the GPA is lower. It's just a coincidence. Plus, the article didn't point out what the margin of error is (or p-values, st. dev, etc). Statistically many of those numbers could be considered to be equal and I'm willing to bet they are - all of the numbers are actually pretty close. 3.36 and 3.34? That has to be well within the margin of error.

[mdaniel35]

There is a lot about this article that is BS. As an engineer student, I would also like to see their ANOVA table to see where the hell they came up with this stuff.

[ludvig1-2009]

I went to an engineering school and while I finished with a 2.93 GPA in engineering, the federal government's hiring policy was if you had a 3.0 GPA you got a higher Grade starting salary. Fortunately since I went to an engineering school they also allowed the higher pay grade if you finished in the upper 3rd of your graduating class, which I did. I have since taken some classes in life science and found that in those classes I would rank like 1st or 2nd out of 60 students. My worst ranking was 4th out of 60 in Botany. At the engineering school, I might have been tied for 3rd place out of 10 students in brain power. My son followed in my path, and is also an engineer. He did have to take the 3rd semester of calculus over several times though.

[jbotmr]

The comment "About one out of three college students intend to pursue a STEM major, which stands for science, technology, engineering and math, but most never make it." still seems to stand.

On my first day campus at a Big Ten university in the early 60s in the School of Engineering I attended a student orientation meeting

The first thing they said was: "Look at the person on your right and left - they won't be here next year."

I will concur with the opinion that they tested harder. In my opinion the freshman and sophomore years were the worst - the tests were designed mainly to wash out those who weren't committed. I was the only one of 7 in my high school graduating class (not the smartest by any means) who attended that university, that graduated with a degree. We were all going for technical degrees, but I really wanted to be an engineer. The others didn't flunk out, they dropped out for reasons known only to them.

It was not easy - it was a tough college. I flunked 2 or 3 courses and had to retake them, but I learned how to study more effectively and did finally graduate in 5 years with the satisfaction that I had beaten the system.

[Jake_Watson]

Note that this study was done using only one college, so its results are limited to the students accepted at that college and the students who graduated. Moreover, the study seems to look only at the GPA's of those students who graduated with a degree in a given discipline, instead of looking at the actual grades. If students changed majors because of low grades--if they were a French major who changed to majoring in Psychology, and did badly in both French and Psychology, they are labeled as Psychology majors with a low GPA.

In any case, a very strange conclusion seems to be drawn from this cursory comparison of the average GPA's of different majors: that a degree in Psychology is more difficult, for example, than a degree in English. And more generally that the GPA's reflect the difficulty of the majors instead of the students' abilities.

Since a graduate's GPA results from grades for classes in other disciplines during the first two years of college, at least three other conclusions could be reached:

1. Those with the lowest GPA do worse in all of their classes, including English, History, a required foreign language, and their own discipline.
2. Those with the highest GPA's do better because they are simply better students.

And by the way, why is Economics listed as a science in this study? Surely we know better than that.

[Jake_Watson]

(Two other conclusions, I meant to say...)

[vsound29]

Economics is certainly a social science. It may not be as concrete as physical science, but I don't think it is fair to throw Economics, Law, Anthropology, or History in with Literature and Music.

[TomJones83]

While I agree that those majors are harder, I have to call absolute bs on her for saying it's the teachers' fault for grading too hard. Does she want an engineer that didn't properly learn their material strengths to be building the bridges she drives on every day? That's such a cop-out, New Age, participation trophy point of view.

[jocompto]

Are the lower GPAs in these STEM disciplines reflective that the grading curve goes both ways? While in some classes, GPA's "live by the curve", others can easily "die by the curve".

Many of my classes graded using a normal distribution, so that the average was a C. In my calculus and physics classes, many of us ended up with C's & D's that would otherwise be solid B's. I still remember getting an 87% on one Multivariate Calculus test that was a D because the rest of the class did so strongly! The break down was 100-97 were A's, 96-94:B 93 - 88:C; 87-85:D; 84 and below F!

One physics professor used multiple choice exams - each set contained the correct calculation's answer and the 4 most common mistakes.

Looking back - did these approaches make me a better, more thorough & careful, and humbler engineer? I have to say YES! Would I be the same person if my professors had "lightened up on grading"? No! Because of these approaches, I tried harder, and have a stronger recall level for these classes material than I do with my MBA material.

I disagree with PULA_RORKN that grades are "no big deal". Your GPA is so crucial to getting that first job or grad school admission. Many students opt out of STEM programs so that they are not left trying to convince hiring managers that their 2.98 GPA is not as reflective of abilities & knowledge as someone with a higher GPA from another program with grade inflation. This is especially hard with some employers (and grad-schools) that reject candidates with a sub 3.0 GPA in the per-screening process. You'll never get the chance to make the case!

Today, students going in to college know that GPA has a lot more weight on both getting that first job and/or into grad school which can impact the rest of your life.

[jschm2681]

The answer is to dumb it all down so the grades go up. It worked in the public schools. So that's why there public schools are so successful. But in Science and Engineering the graduates end up constructing bridges, making generators for power plants, creating drugs in big pharma and becoming doctors. But what;s a few mistakes if the students can feel good about themselves. Constructing a phrase is the same as constructing a bridge.