Two-Year Colleges, Physics Majors, and Diversity

Two-Year Colleges, Physics Majors, and Diversity As noted last month, we're taking a look at physics in two-year colleges (TYCs). We expect to have the first reports from our 2012–13 Nationwide Survey of High School Physics Teachers in the spring of 2014. Last month we noted that the high school physics experience of undergraduate physics majors was quite different for students who started at a TYC and those who did not. That is not the only difference we saw. Nine percent of the physics undergraduate seniors in 2007 had started their college education at a TYC. These students are more racially diverse: about 20% of those who started at a TYC were Hispanic or a non-Asian minority. (African Americans are included in this group.) While about one physics major in 11 started at a TYC, the ratio for Hispanic and non-Asian minorities was about one in six. The Hispanics and non-Asian minority physics majors were almost twice as likely to have started at a TYC. In the November issue, we'll look at physics offerings in TYCs.