Why visible minorities pursue Math and Business in post-secondary
People belonging to the visible minority population in Canada are twice as likely to pursue Math as a field of study in comparison to people not belonging to a minority group, Statistics Canada reports.
According to an article in Education Week, many immigrant parents encourage their children to pursue Math and Science, believing the skills would lead to better career opportunities. A large population of people belonging to minorities where the native language is not English are also more likely to pursue a career in STEM since they find developing skills on numerical subjects more comfortable. An expansion in the number of computer science courses across the States drew more women and minorities to pursue it as a field of study.
A study published in Demography also mentioned that immigrants are more likely to choose subjects that require the use of Math and logic rather than communication skills. Computer and information sciences is another popular field of study, according to an article by Vox in 2017, the number of women and minorities taking up computer courses increased.
Business is also a popular field of study for people belonging to a visible minority with 15.7 per cent people pursuing it in comparison to 11.3 per cent of the non-minority population. About 8.7 per cent of the visible minority population also pursue health and associated areas as a field of study, compared to 7.8 per cent of the non-minority population. Approximately 3.4 per cent also pursue humanities as compared to 2.9 per cent of the non-minority population as a field of study.
Visible minorities make up 3.5 per cent of the physical, life sciences and technology as a field of study, compared to 2 per cent of the non-minority population. According to a report by TrustRadius, people of colour pursuing tech has increased in the past decade.
Personal, protective and transportation services are also quite popular among people not belonging to a visible minority (3.7 per cent), compared to 2.1 per cent of the visible minority population. According to an article by CBC, only 12 per cent of the RCMP's 20,000 members identified as a visible minority as of 2020. This figure has also remained stagnant over the past few years, the article says.
The non-minority population makes up 1.5 per cent of the agriculture and natural resources filed of study as compared to 0.8 per cent of the visible minorities. One of the reasons for this might be that many white farmers in Canada have access to generations of land, resources and experiences, according to an article by The Globe and Mail. This puts them in a better position to pursue agriculture as a field of study.
While 2.3 per cent of the visible minority population takes up Education as a filed of study, the number is almost half when compared to 4.1 per cent of the non-minority population in the field.
A study by the Sociological Science journal also found that visible minorities in Canada are 11 per cent more likely to face discrimination during hiring as compared to the United States. This might explain why there aren't many visible minorities studying education, agriculture or protective services.
Hi Nyamat, interesting correlation with visible minorities being more likely to go for math since their may be a language barrier. It’s also interesting that education is most popular for non visible minorities. My 3 sisters are all in education, so this checks out! Nice graphs too, I like that you switched the colours, I was wondering if I should do that for my different graphs and came to the conclusion that I should, since using the same colours over and over even if it’s for the same category may be boring on the eyes, and all mesh into one. Good work!
ReplyDeleteHi Nyamat ! nice topic that you choose the relation in the visible minorities being more likely to go math since may be a language issue . Yes this is a issue of concern so that's why your data is really different and I really don't get bored while reading it because it was new to me and another thing about your graphs that looks very attractive because it really helps to make better understanding for your data and the way you present it looks great . so overall great work .
ReplyDeletewelldone!
Hi Nyamat. This was a interesting topic and it is accurate to me as I have heard that immigrant parents push their children into more STEM focused majors. I like your charts, they are clear and straight to the point. Godd job!
ReplyDeleteHey Nyamat, very interesting and informative final data update. I really like your graphs as they are clean and straightforward. It’s also interesting that the RCMP has little visible minority working there. Overall, great update!
ReplyDeleteHey Nyamat, this is such a great update. I think your topic is amazing. This does not come off as a surprise to me. And you did a good job finding source explaining why this trend happens. One thing though. I wish you could use the same set of colours for both chart. Other than that, great job and great effort.
ReplyDeleteI really liked how you discussed this theme of how minorities in Canada prefer STEM and business fields with parental encouragement and a comfortable influence on digital subjects. And your diagrams are very clear and easy to understand. This is an excellent job.
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