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Talking About Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences, by Elaine Seymour and Nancy M. Hewitt. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. 429 pages: NPL cloth. ISBN: 0-8133-8926-7.
SHELLEY J. CORRELL Stanford University [email protected]
Seymour and Hewitt's stated goal in this study was to discover the factors that lead large numbers of capable undergraduates to switch from science, math, and engineering (S.M.E.) college majors to "nonscience" majors. Committed to the idea that undergraduates are expert informants who are especially qualified to describe the strengths and limitations of their educational experience, the authors conducted ethnographic interviews and focus group discussions with over 400 students, including both "switchers" and "nonswitchers," from seven diverse universities in the United States. The result is a book that both achieves its main goal and, with its numerous, insightful student quotes, is a delight to read.
One intriguing finding is that "switchers" and "non-switchers" did not differ appreciably from each other in the grades they earned in S.M.E. classes, in their perceived level of conceptual difficulty with the curriculum, or in the nature of their criticisms of S.M.E. departments. In fact, both...