Male LGBQ Students More Likely to Leave STEM Majors Than Their Heterosexual Peers: Study

Women who identified as sexual minorities, however, were more likely to remain in a STEM field.

Written byDiana Kwon

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Undergraduate students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer (LGBQ) are less likely to remain in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors than their heterosexual peers, according to a study published this week (March 14) in Science Advances.

Social scientists have suspected this trend, “but it’s nice to see it documented,” Erin Cech, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor who wasn’t involved in the study, tells Nature.

Bruce Hughes, an education researcher at Montana State University and the author of the new study, abandoned engineering after his undergraduate studies. According to Nature, he wondered whether being gay affected that decision, and he set out to investigate whether LGBQ students, in general, were less likely to remain ...

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Meet the Author

Diana Kwon
Diana is a freelance science journalist who covers the life sciences, health, and academic life. She’s a regular contributor to The Scientist and her work has appeared in several other publications, including Scientific American, Knowable, and Quanta. Diana was a former intern at The Scientist and she holds a master’s degree in neuroscience from McGill University. She’s currently based in Berlin, Germany.
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