High School Course Access and Postsecondary STEM Enrollment and Attainment

This report studies the effects of access to high school math and science courses on postsecondary science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) enrollment and degree attainment using administrative data from Missouri. The data include more than 140,000 students from 14 cohorts entering the 4-year public university system. The effects of high school course access are identified by exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in course offerings within high schools over time.

The authors find that differential access to high school courses does not affect postsecondary STEM enrollment or degree attainment. The null results are estimated precisely enough to rule out moderate impacts.