COMPARISON OF REGISTERED STUDENT NUMBERS IN STEM AREAS AT TURKISH UNIVERSITIES BETWEEN 2013-2019 IN THE CONTEXT OF GENDER

Abstract

In new economic system, which is predicted to play a major role in information and communication technologies and scientific approach, individuals with knowledge and higher order thinking skills of STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) are needed. Women and men are represented in different ways in diverse STEM fields, as well as in different fields of business and in many areas of life. In fact, as mentioned frequently in the literature, there are large differences in the participation of women in STEM fields at university level compared to men. In this context, this study aims to make a comparison between the years 2013-2019 in the context of gender in STEM fields the number of registered students of the universities in Turkey and to reveal changes in the number basis for the STEM fields. The data of the study, which uses the document analysis approach that is one of the qualitative research methods, consists of documents containing the number of female and male students who have registered in these fields by choosing STEM fields between 2013-2019 on the Information Management System of the Council of Higher Education (YOK) at associate, undergraduate, and graduate levels. The departments included in the STEM fields among the education fields presented in the YOK data are categorized under four categories: Science Fields, Computer Science-Mathematics Fields, Medical-Health fields and Engineering-Technology fields. At this stage, the data of the study were grouped under the appropriate category by looking at their equivalence with the YOK’s fields, and then the total number of students for the relevant categories were arranged in Excel tables according to these last groupings. In the last stage of data analysis, related graphics were created for each education level from the numbers in the tables and presented in the findings section. The findings of the study show that over the years covered by the study, Medical-Health Fields are generally at the associate level for STEM fields; At the undergraduate and graduate levels, the Engineering-Technology fields have always the highest number of students in line with the students' preferences. In addition, although there are changes in the number of male and female students in the fields of Science at graduate level and in the fields of Computer Science-Mathematics at the undergraduate level, the number of male students is higher than the number of female students in all categories except for Medical and Health Fields at the associate, undergraduate and graduate levels.