This summer, Michigan Tech was named one of the “2017 Top Online Colleges for Women in STEM” by SR Education Group, an education research publisher. SR Education researched all STEM accredited colleges that offered at least 10 fully online STEM degrees and evaluated those schools based on support for female students in STEM fields.
Indicators of support for female students included the proportion of female STEM graduates and available online resources for female STEM students, among other factors. Michigan Technological University received a score of 65.54 out of 100.
280 colleges were considered in SR Education Group’s study, which uses the definition of STEM fields as described by the National Center for Education Statistics: “agriculture and natural resources, architecture, biology and biomedical sciences, computer and information sciences, engineering and engineering technologies, health studies, mathematics and statistics, and physical and social sciences.”
For the 64 schools including Michigan Tech that actually made the cut, SR Education Group calculated a “STEM-friendly score” that employs data from NCES, the American Society for Engineering Education, and the school’s own official website. SR Education Group also manually researched tuition rates for each STEM-accredited school, with Michigan Tech’s annual tuition being estimated at $20,225.
In order to get an estimate for Michigan Tech’s annual tuition, SR Education Group used a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering degree (annual tuition S19,503) and added the distance learning fee listed on Michigan Tech’s website ($722).
SR Education Group released the study this summer on GuidetoOnlineSchools.com, which says that “female students in these fields may face unique challenges in their educational pursuits because women are widely underrepresented in STEM professions; women make up almost half of the total workforce the country but comprise only one-quarter of the STEM workforce.”
