Step onto a street in Shanghai or any large Chinese city, and one notion immediately becomes clear: The United States began losing ground in science and technology development years ago.
Almost no cars in China are gasoline powered. AI face-recognition is used to apprehend jaywalkers and make cashless payments. Bullet trains pass so quickly the human eye can barely distinguish them.
These innovations were in place years before the COVID pandemic. So, it’s no surprise that in 2025, China is expected for the first time to out-spend the United States in research and development for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. According to an analysis of World Bank and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development data, by 2030 China will invest 30% more than the United States in STEM research and development.
“The nation recognizes that the People’s Republic of China is making gains and moving toward the new frontier of innovation in unparalleled ways,” said James L. Moore III, Distinguished Professor of Urban Education and professor of counselor education. Moore is on loan to the National Science Foundation (NSF) from Ohio State, serving as the assistant director of the Directorate for STEM Education.
“They have prioritized their human and financial resources to make these kinds of investments,” he said. In terms of STEM education, China and its 1.4 billion people operate with critical mass.
“If they take their top 5%, and we take our top 5% in the United States, they fare a whole lot better than we do,” said Moore, also a professor of counselor education in the college. “The nations that invest in education and workforce development are the countries that will have a global edge for the next century.”
How did we fall behind in STEM?
Since World War II, the United States was the leader in STEM research and education, especially in higher education. But both China and India now confer more undergraduate STEM degrees, and China leads the world in STEM doctoral degrees awarded and research articles published in ranked scientific journals.
“There’s a reason that people come from (other) countries to get PhDs in the U.S., because our higher education has been seen as the best in the world,” said Jay Plasman, assistant professor of workforce development and education who researches career and technical education in STEM. “This is where you come if you want to learn. We’re at risk of losing that.”
One can argue that open scientific inquiry, not superiority, should be the goal. And the United States remains at the forefront of medical research and other science. But how does the country stand to lose if scientific innovation isn’t prioritized?
And what’s at stake if success in STEM remains out of reach for large swaths of students — from first graders in rural Alabama to algebra students in urban Los Angeles to students struggling to study physics at Ohio State?
“The United States must continue to make critical investments at every pathway and every level of the educational juncture, because the nation is at that place right now,” Moore said.
Here is how the College of Education and Human Ecology is working to bolster STEM education.
Repair the leaky STEM pipeline
Fewer than 40% of students who begin studying STEM in college graduate in their chosen field. The drop-off is worse among women and students of color. That’s important because the American workforce is, year by year, increasingly more female and non-white. It’s crucial that STEM keeps pace.
In the last decade, the number of women and students of color earning STEM degrees has grown, according to NSF. But the distribution remains uneven: Far fewer women, for example, earn computer and information science degrees or engineering degrees. According to one study, women dropped out of STEM degree programs at a rate of 23% higher than their male counterparts.
Shirley L. Yu, associate professor of educational psychology, and her lab, STEM Participation, Achievement and Resilience through Knowledge and Skills, study experiences of STEM students and why they might succeed or drop out.
“We focus on the culture of STEM and students’ perceptions of the instructional contexts — what’s happening in their courses,” Yu said. She studies how students regard the course structure or the ways they are graded, for example. And how do those perceptions motivate students and impact their success?
Grading on a curve, for example, creates “a zero-sum game,” Yu said, in which one student’s academic gain is balanced by another’s loss. “Whereas if the instructor focuses on, ‘Everybody can learn in this course. Our goal is for everyone to improve their understanding of these physics concepts or biological concepts,’ … that is what we call a mastery classroom goal structure,” that tends to lead students to focus on expanding their own understanding, enjoying the learning process and seeking feedback when they need help.
Her lab delves into this interplay of instruction, motivation and engagement. She partners with Ohio State faculty to measure students’ motivation in courses such as physics and engineering. One study, led by former advisee Elise Allen, ’24 PhD, and published in January, considered motivational barriers to success, including what experts call cost perceptions.
Costs might include “feelings (that) the class … causes too much worry or anxiety for the student, or they feel like they’re missing out on too many other opportunities,” said Allen, now an assistant professor at University of Northern Colorado. “As these costs rise, it can tend to lower more positive outcomes.”
Another barrier is “performance avoidance” — dodging feelings of failure by, for instance, procrastinating on assignments or not speaking up in class for fear of being judged. Allen’s study, co-authored by Yu, Postdoctoral Scholar Andrew Perry and doctoral candidate Arianna Black (Henning), found that when students engaged in performance avoidance, and at the same time considered the “costs” of their physics course to be high, the consequences were detrimental.
Students’ perceptions often grow out of their views of the professor, Allen said. “Whether they care about students or are available to help students — all those motivational climate pieces,” Allen said. “Whether they say 50% of the class is going to fail the first exam and set that expectation. … That can definitely impact student motivation and outcomes.”
“We’re really finding that it’s important that … whoever is instructing in that environment is creating that supportive, motivational climate from the get-go.”
Yu directs Ohio State’s Graduate Certificate in College and University Teaching and teaches the flagship course, ESEPSY 7404: College Teaching. The course prepares new and aspiring instructors — including STEM instructors — how to teach in ways that lead to more inclusive and successful learning.
Find new avenues for STEM education
How students view their ability to succeed in STEM can be tied to cultural messages about who belongs in STEM and who doesn’t. Students’ expectations for how they will perform “line up pretty well with their actual performance,” Allen said.
There is more to STEM success, though, than sheer academic ability, Yu said. “Two students can have the same objective ability, but one student or one group of students doubts their ability. (That) tends to be the underrepresented students for a variety of reasons.”
But those are precisely the perspectives needed to tackle the pressing scientific concerns the world faces, said Jay Plasman.
“We need different ways of approaching problems,” he said. “The more people you have thinking about a problem in a different way, the more possibility we have of coming up with a really good solution.”
His research and that of workforce development and education colleague Edward Fletcher Jr. demonstrate that career-focused education avenues can bolster students’ sense of belonging in STEM. Some of Plasman’s research considers STEM career and technical education for students with learning disabilities.
Career and technical education has a stigma, said Plasman. “It often was seen as a dumping ground, a place where you send students who were not academically inclined.”
But in his current National Science Foundation study, math achievement scores grew for all career and technical education students whom Plasman examined, but they increased even more for those with learning disabilities. They also applied to college more and were less likely to take remedial classes once they got there.
“They were more likely to develop feelings of STEM self-efficacy, STEM identity and the value of STEM, or STEM utility,” said Plasman, also director of the college’s Dennis Learning Center. “So, they’re developing all these key things that will hopefully help them to ultimately go on and graduate from college and get a career in that field.”
Engineering career and technical education students were more likely to study engineering in college and more likely to graduate. “That’s not limiting to students with learning disabilities. That’s all students,” he said.
Fletcher studies STEM education in NAF academies, a nonprofit, industry-sponsored network formerly known as National Academy Foundation. High-school engineering and information technology students take industry-specific courses and get work-based experiences. Black males and other groups tend to be more engaged, Fletcher said.
“They’re able to apply what they’re learning and be more involved with it,” Fletcher said. “They also find more meaning in the curriculum; it’s not abstract.”
“I find that (Black male) students in the academies tend to have significantly higher levels of emotional engagement,” he said. “Their sense of belonging, sense of safety, the connectedness that they have to schools are greater than students who are in a traditional (high school) track.”
Cultivating STEM awareness early
Analysts say it is critical that the United States pursue innovation in multiple emerging areas, including superconductor technology, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. The work begins in K-12 schools.
Sophia Jeong’s Fulbright Fellowship at an R1 university in Istanbul is allowing her to research how to train teachers to use AI in a way that expands who benefits.
“I am working with science and math and educational technology professors here at the university to really help preservice and in-service teachers learn how to integrate AI into their classroom space with broader goals of inclusivity and accessibility,” said Jeong, an assistant professor of STEM education.
Working in a monolingual and monoracial culture has forced Jeong to look deeper into ways families foster traditions. “It got me thinking about diversity and cultural differences in ways that are more localized and context dependent…” she said. “The conversation around representation in STEM needs to continue to evolve and become more nuanced.”
Some Turkish students come from low-income villages. “When we are talking about AI integration, we’ve often made the assumption that these students would have a tablet … or a computer at home that they could use to access AI-powered educational technologies,” she said, “but that’s not always the case.”
The same applies to K-12 schools in the United States. Where children live impacts how they see themselves, and how they receive STEM education. Edward Fletcher evaluated a rural school in Opelousas, Louisiana.
“We were interviewing the students, they were saying, ‘Well, how are we supposed to learn math? We’re on our seventh math teacher this year,’” he said. “It opened my eyes to the disparities and issues (in) rural areas.” He decided to include rural schools in his research.
Children begin noticing differences — that adults encourage only certain kids to focus on math and science — in late elementary school. After fifth grade, girls’ confidence in their math ability drops. At the same time, students begin to differentiate between subjects they like and don’t like.
“It compounds this negative trajectory for a lot of students, unfortunately,” said Allen, who also taught high school. “Those messages start when we’re really young, with parents, caregivers, teachers, peers. All of those people can have an influence on, by the time a student gets to college, whether they feel like that (STEM) is even on the table for them.”
But it can go the other way. Maybe it’s time to reframe STEM inclusion as our ethical responsibility, said Jeong, as a necessary approach toward sustainable scientific advancement. Working with Columbus City Schools, each year she leads a project that guides students to map out community resources.
“I have seen some students who have remained completely silent for nearly half a year come out of their shell and become positioned as the expert of their community…” she said. “Not only the peers, but the student themselves, are surprised that this student, who has never spoken, is now speaking out and sharing a wealth of knowledge about the transportation system, where the nearest hospital is if your parents get sick.”
“It’s a highly localized example of when you have a diverse group of students working together, juxtaposing their perspectives, opinions, beliefs and knowledge. … It’s a beautiful thing to see.”
