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Results show growth in STEM AD attainment across cohorts but not in healthcare, with variation by gender, race/ethnicity, family income, and 10th-grade mathematics.",{"@graph":14,"@context":73},[15,34,56],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/","Research & 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is the study trying to determine about Massachusetts community-college students?","Question",{"text":63,"@type":64},"It examines whether a growing share of Massachusetts community-college students are earning associate degrees in high-paying STEM or healthcare fields over time.","Answer",{"name":66,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":67},"How does the paper measure changes across students and time?",{"text":68,"@type":64},"It compares trends across 12 cohorts of community-college entrants using multinomial logit analysis, assessing AD completion within six years of entry.",{"name":70,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":71},"What differences does the study find between STEM and healthcare associate-degree completion?",{"text":72,"@type":64},"The paper finds a substantial increase in the proportion earning STEM ADs across cohorts, but not an increase in the proportion earning healthcare 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reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2024. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero)  \nAre Community-College Students Increasingly Choosing High-Paying Fields of Study? Evidence from Massachusetts  \nRichard J. Murnane  \nJohn B. Willett  \nHarvard University  \nAubrey McDonough  \nJohn P. Papay  \nAnn Mantil  \nBrown University  \nThe labor-market payoff to workers with associate degrees in healthcare and STEM occupations is very high in Massachusetts. We examine whether this induced a growing proportion of students in MA community colleges (MACCs) to earn an associate degree (AD) in one of these fields. We do this by using multinomial logit analysis to compare trends across 12 cohorts of MACC entrants in the proportion of students who earned an AD in a healthcare or STEM program within six years of entry.  \nWe find a substantial increase across cohorts in the proportion of students who earned an AD in a STEM program, but not in the proportion who earned an AD in a healthcare program. We found differences in degree attainment by student gender, race/ethnicity, family income, and 10th-Grade mathematics score. Interviews with MACC program leaders revealed that supply constraints hinder expansion of many healthcare AD programs, but not STEM programs.  \nKeywords: Associate degrees, community colleges, descriptive analysis, econometric analysis, educational policy, equity, inequality, longitudinal studies, multinomial logit, race, survival analysis  \nIntroduction  \nIn recent years, building a skilled workforce in the healthcare and in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields has become a critical challenge for many states in the nation. In Massachusetts, the site of our current investigation, analysts predict that by 2030 the field of healthcare will constitute “the largest source of employment growth in Massachusetts [with] an estimated 210,000–230,000 [additional] jobs” and that careers in STEM will “account for 40% of the increase in total employment in the Commonwealth”(MA Executive Office of Education, 2022) . These fields also tend to be highly-compensated. The state reports that entry-level earnings in STEM are approximately double those of all entry-level Massachusetts workers.  \nCommunity colleges play a critical role in preparing students for the STEM and healthcare workforce by offering a variety of associate-degree (AD) programs in these fields. Graduates of these programs have fared well in the Massachusetts labor market (Modestino & Forman, 2021) .  \nOf course, community colleges have several missions, including offering short-term workforce training and academic-enrichment opportunities and preparing students to transfer to four-year colleges and universities, as well as providing associate-degree programs that prepare students to thrive in local labor markets. We focus on an aspect of this last mission, providing associate-degree programs in the STEM and healthcare fields. AD programs in the STEM field offered by Massachusetts community colleges (MACCs) include information technology, engineering, cybersecurity, and electronics. Those in healthcare include nursing, medical imaging, laboratory technology, and dental hygiene.  \nThis paper arises from a continuing partnership between our research team and the Massachusetts State Departments of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) and Higher Education (DHE) . DHE staff members were concerned about questions of equity, including whether the probability of AD completion in high-paying fields was increasing for Black and Hispanic students and students from low-income families, groups that historically have not  \nCreative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative","cbCairmjf1ooIMk9","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCairmjf1ooIMk9","pdf",1343062,15,"English","# Introduction\n## Community-college roles in STEM and healthcare\n# Research Questions\n## Cross-cohort trends in AD completion by student characteristics\n## Obstacles to completing AD programs","[{\"question\":\"What is the study trying to determine about Massachusetts community-college students?\",\"answer\":\"It examines whether a growing share of Massachusetts community-college students are earning associate degrees in high-paying STEM or healthcare fields over time.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the paper measure changes across students and time?\",\"answer\":\"It compares trends across 12 cohorts of community-college entrants using multinomial logit analysis, assessing AD completion within six years of entry.\"},{\"question\":\"What differences does the study find between STEM and healthcare associate-degree completion?\",\"answer\":\"The paper finds a substantial increase in the proportion earning STEM ADs across cohorts, but not an increase in the proportion earning healthcare ADs.\"}]","Are Community-College Students Increasingly Choosing High-Paying Fields of Study? - Evidence from Massachusetts | PDF",1792069214,38]